Daniel Blair

End of Diploma CAS Reflections

When I look back at myself before this 2 year CAS program, I can appreciate many
things that have changed, both in my emotional and in psychological level. When I
started my attitude towards CAS was not the most optimistic about what I would get
out of the program, but after all this time I now understand the benefit I have
reaped from the taking part in it. It was difficult to visualize the program in any
other way than a chore, that needed to be completed along with getting good
grades in order to graduate, but this changed as I got more involved. I think that the
turning point was when I chose to go to Ambato on the InterCAS trip between
schools. It wasnt obligatory to go, and there were a lot of risks involved that I
normally wouldnt have gone for, like sleeping in a strangers house for a few days
or dealing with up close and personal with autistic children. I did it nevertheless and
it ended up being one of my best memories from the past academic year.
As for attempting to meet the learning outcomes expected of an individual once
they complete a CAS program, I wasnt really aiming (or should I say aware?) to
particularly tick them off my list so that I could go on to the next one. They all just
sort of complemented each other whilst doing the variety of activities that I took
part in last year, and I ended up fulfilling all of them anyway. I guess that if I had to
choose one which was the hardest one to fulfill it would have to be having an
increased awareness of my own strengths and area for growth, given that I dont
normally indulge in a lot of self analysis. The CAS activities definitely helped me
with this.
Developing new skills was something that I found easy to do, given that I consider
myself good at learning new skills once I get past the phase where I have to take
the risk in order to do so in the first place.
Both the trip to Ambato and the work I did earlier in the year with an orphanage
have granted me skills which I consider immensely important: to be able to
empathize with others and to be more generous. Given some circumstance or
another, the individuals that I dealt with ended up becoming less fortunate than
myself, and I should consider myself lucky. This should not stop me from sharing
some of my fortune with these individuals and try and make their lives a bit better,
even if it is just with my time.
I could also begin to understand why an autistic child behaves differently than what
we would expect them to behave, given that their mind functions in different ways
than ours and we cannot expect them to comply with the standards we have set for
ourselves, which do not apply to them.
In terms of the benefit that we caused for these autistic children, it is debatable to
what extent we helped them in the long term. We interacted with them, and gained

Daniel Blair
awareness of their situation, but we didnt necessarily raise much money for their
cause or bettered the equipment with which they could have specialized learning. I
wonder whether the activity was more for our benefit and help us see how fortunate
we are, or for the benefit of the autistic children.
I think that CAS is included as such an important part of the IB because it ensure
that not only students with the highest academic scores are molded, but people
that are more well rounded as well. Life is not only academic intelligence, it is all the
other types of human intelligence as well. The intelligence in knowing what you
have and appreciating it as much as the intelligence in being able to express ones
self creatively. This is a particularly important point for me, given that I feel like
havent done as many creative activities as I would have liked. I consider myself a
creative person and if I could do the CAS program again I think that I would take
part in more activities that would help me develop creatively.