I began right away at Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School with my new goal of 'Participaction.' My first major Creative endeavour was voluntarily aiding the oft-neglected Theatre department of our school. I teamed up with my fellow student and eager participant Edward Ou to volunteer our precious time and effort into the bettering of the many productions that Theatre Churchill produces every single year. I was delegated the job of organising and melding the small group of willing volunteer stage-crew members into a invincible strike force of able-bodied workers, ready to jump at my command and perform tasks with split-second precision. Through my leadership, my task force effectively dealt with any and all problems that arose over the course of the two month effort. It culminated with the impressive One-act Plays at the beginning of 2003, Common Era. Not only was this a service endeavour, it also involved an impressive (or unprecedented) amount of creative thinking. I was responsible for developing and building a working set that could meld and fit seamlessly into any of the four plays. This forced me to analyze the contents of the plays in detail, and think of common themes that could be incorporated relevantly into a final product. I feel that I gained valuable experience through my 140 hours of volunteering over two years in this pleasurable environment. Theatre had never before interested me very much, but now after experiencing it first-hand, I believe that I will continue in the future, possibly at university, with volunteering for theatre companies, nurturing a side of myself that I only discovered thanks to the CAS program.
I also participated in Creative, Active and Service projects on a national and global scale. In grade 11, I joined the Model United Nations Club at Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School. There, I actively sought out debate and heated negotiations regarding exciting and topical discussions of world events. Combining strength with my Komrade Anthony Wray, we took on the position of the United States of America for a mock United Nations event in defending its foreign policies relating to the use of land mines in war-zones. This club helped me further my comprehension of the world stage of politics and explore the various opportunities that I can examine in later life. This year, I continued with the Model United Nations Club but supplemented it with a trip to the Vancouver Youth Parliament. This group of committed young peoples discussed over a weekend many issues that face the youth of Vancouver, and proposed new bills that further the status of youth in society. It really gave me an excellent view of the Canadian parliamentary system, as it was fully based on the real workings of parliament, right down to the Speaker and questions period.
Moving onto the Active component of my Creative, Active and Service programme, I mainly continued with the well founded activities in which I have been participating for several years. I continued playing defence for my local soccer team, the Point Grey Mustangs. This entailed practicing one to two times per week, combined with a game every week for the duration of the season. Through these late evening practices in the pouring rain, and freezing temperatures, I learned of the true meaning of torture, such as must have been experienced by the Vikings of old, or those brave soulds who endeavour on expeditions of unknown lands, and I gained painfully important memories that will stay with me throughout my life. Furthermore, I continued and advanced with my playing of the sport of Ultimate. I have been playing since grade 8, but in grade 11 I discovered that Sir Winston Churchill Secondary lacked an Ultimate team. I faced an ultimatum: stop playing Ultimate forever and give up on my childhood dream of becoming the ultimate Ultimate player in the history of civilized scholarly society, or take the initiative to start an Ultimate revolution at Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School. Instead of taking the easy route out and playing video games for the remainder of the year, I decided to start up a team from scratch in order to not only fulfill my physical urge to play the sport, but also to help addict the rest of the student populace to this amazingly psychedelic sport. I teamed up with several teachers in order to get the team off the ground and in the end; I was in charge of coaching a 10 person team. I held practices several times a week for the entire spring season and succeeded not only in training a fledgling team of world-weary IB students, but renewing their faith in excerise and vigorous competition. This was a great experience for me and I really enjoyed being outside with my friends and frolicking in the glorious sun shine. I will definitely continue with Ultimate in the future, possibly playing for the Vancouver Ultimate League this summer or at university next year.
It is extremely clear from the brief overview of my Creative, Active and Service programme that I succeeded in furthering the objectives I had laid out before I commenced my activities. I joined many new, to me at least, activities, many of which I had previously shunned because of their unpopularity with my comrades. I also found that participating in these new pursuits helped me fit into my new school. Since I entered Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School in grade 11, I predicted that many groups of people had already formed, sometimes excluding newcomers. Instead, I managed to infiltrate these strongholds under the guise of Creative, Active and Service endeavours. This helped me adjust and therefore socially contribute more to my new and important community of super-capable and highly intelligent peers. Throughout the two years of my Creative, Active and Service programme, I naturally found a balance between the three areas competing for my time and focus. I maintained a strong involvement in sports while creating time to play a part in the many school-based interests I held while forming new interests and continually challenging myself. Ultimately, it seems as if my Creative, Active and Service programme has been quite beneficial, not only to me, but indirectly to the whole community at large. Since the activities that I have participated in over the last two years have had such a large effect on me, I honestly believe that there is a high possibility that I will seriously consider promptly continuing with most of the activities in the near future, such as at university.
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