Journal Entry 6/5/23

In my CAS experience, I am most grateful for the people who supported me, the new things I learned about myself and the world, and how this project has changed my life. Throughout CAS I did various projects including a Model United Nations with Diego, a school newspaper with students in my school, an activity fair, and a recycling project with the help of Profe Alberto. 

The people who supported me throughout these projects not only helped me to achieve my projects effectively, but were also just special people who I feel very grateful to have worked with. In MUN, I feel very grateful for Diego who engaged with issues of global importance with me and helped create a magical event for our two schools. He helped me to feel very interested and engaged in global politics and also gave me community and friendship when I was new in the school. During my recycling project, Profe Alberto helped me achieve the whole project while also unconditionally supporting me throughout my struggles. He assisted me throughout the entire process throughout our celebrations and setbacks and kept on encouraging me to go further when I felt like the project was too daunting or scary. Lastly, I am very grateful for Ms. Amy who stuck with me throughout my entire CAS experience and did not give up on my crazy ideas or endeavors. She stayed with me after I had 20 ideas for a CAS project and encouraged me to undertake new challenges and gain new skills.

I am very grateful for the new things I learned about myself and the world because it has helped me to know and love myself more, and understand the world around me. Through undertaking new challenges and gaining new skills, I have learned how to appreciate the strengths that I have such as motivation or positivity, and learned which areas of growth I want to water, such as perseverance and group-speaking. I also feel very grateful for my various setbacks throughout my projects because, although they were hard, I think they taught me very valuable lessons about how I want to interact with the world. For example, when no one signed up for earth club in the activities fair, instead of feeling defeated, I took another route which ended up having a very special ending. This has taught me to not give up when things don’t work out, but instead keep on trying.

Lastly, I am very grateful for how CAS has changed my life. CAS has made me into a more caring and open-minded risk taker. I now feel much more confident and capable of taking on challenging risks or projects that might seem scary. I also think CAS has changed my life by making me not care as much about what others want or expect from me, and instead focus on what I truly want and not be afraid of not being like everyone else. Although this year and CAS taught me many things and I had many struggles, I also learned very valuable lessons about the world and got to know very special people in the process.