Wonderment Grant

With any good news, there will always be bad news. I feel like although it is a tad bit dramatic, this statement accurately represents IB for a variety of different reasons. CAS is one of the ways this good news-bad news relationship perfectly resonates with the IB diploma. And so I digress; The good news from this week? The Wonderment program will be visiting in mid-February to evaluate a few projects (including yours truly) for a 500 USD funding grant. That in itself is truly amazing, as this amount fits my current budget perfectly, allowing me to purchase materials I had originally considered extra. The most expensive of these materials are quality flag pins for every delegate, something I hope will serve as a memento for their best LPMUN conference yet! The 500 USD will be combined with the funds I make from International Celebration Night, and these funds will hopefully form an account that younger generations who decide to carry my project on in the future, allowing them to get a head start in CAS. This good news came fairly recently, and does require that our entire Wonderment page is completed, including the community interviews, budget, and other sections. This leads me to the bad news, because as I said above it will always accompany its positive counterpart. The bad news is fairly simple; With the mid-February deadline approaching fast, I am feeling an enormous amount of pressure to prepare my relatively private CAS project for public viewing and evaluation. The video I am creating is a large part of this, and while I am making steady progress I am also incredibly stressed. I am feeling the weight of my project now that we’ve entered the second trimester, and I can say that it has certainly worn on my resolve and confidence. But that is what CAS is all about. The idea of CAS is to push you into the deep end, where you will most certainly flail and panic but eventually realize that every single person has the power and capability to swim. I am committing a day this weekend to working on my video, and I have a meeting scheduled with one of my community interviewees to finalize that section, as well as a meeting with a very capable and CAS successful senior who is willing to assist me with my project. CAS is tough but I am tougher, and I am prepared to face this challenge, overcome it, and wow my potential investors!