Closing time

Well, here we are.  My blogging has been less-than-meticulous lately, but that's mostly due to a lack of new activities.  My schedule has been packed with all the old favourites that I've started and continued over these last two years, but you reach a point in each where there's not always something new and exciting to say.  I gave a pretty thorough status update in my January reflection video, but before I complete my final CAS reflection I'd like to bring this blog up to date on the new developments that I've faced over the last few months in each of my activities.

Yearbook:  Picture-taking and page editing, ahoy!

The struggles Jess and I are facing this year are the same as I've written about in the past, and with all that experience behind us we're much better equipped to deal with these hardships.  I needed dodgeball results from the student council, and so I buckled down and devoted myself to trying to get them; when they couldn't be found, I made the page work without them.  Drama is a waste of time and energy; that's what I've learnt most through yearbook.  Dig in and get things done instead of becoming overwhelmed by the task ahead; the results will be worth your effort.

Newspaper:  Another month, another issue.
 

The romance edition was published on Valentine's Day, and we're planning a grab-bag final issue to be released at the start of June.  If yearbook has taught me about the importance of hard work, I think what I've learned most through newspaper is the point where one should put perfectionism aside and just go with it.  Yes, my buttons are going to be pushed when the last line of an article get cuts off and yes, a sentence shouldn't be ended with a preposition, but it's important that one does not focus so hard on the trees that they can't see the forest.  It's important to work hard and do your best, but you'll never be content if you accept nothing less than perfection.  Our effort has created a newspaper of which I'm proud to have been a part, and that there is the forest.

Junior Achievement:  Business plan and the home stretch.

There's only a week or so left for Dechameleon, although I'd say it's a busy week ahead.  We've planned a 50%-off closing sale that has generated quite a bit of interest, so if we're lucky, this business will end with a bang, not a whimper.  Junior Achievement was the last CAS activity that I initiated, and I think that it really exemplifies how far I've come over these last two years.  We faced a lot of hurdles - troubles with the marketing department, company members resigning until only three of us remained, cancellations of selling events and production delays, sales difficulties, pretty much every problem conceivable.  In retrospect, I faced more challenges with JA then with any other of my CAS activities, except perhaps the great undertaking that is yearbook.  But I've blogged about Junior Achievement the least, because in the times of these hardships, I don't feel overwhelmed or like they're immense obstacles.  Through CAS I've expanded my horizons and my capabilities.  New challenges?  Bring them on!

I think those three are the main updates I wanted to write before I post my CAS conclusion.  This entire blog is evidence of my growth over the CAS program, but the following entries in particular are those that I think best exemplify the eight CAS learning outcomes:

1.  Increased their awareness of their own strengths and area for growth
Evidence:  Confessions of a seriously out of shape teenager (Write-up, October 8, 2012)

2.  Undertaken new challenges
Evidence:   Letters to the editor (Article/write-up, November 8, 2013)
The eleventh hour (Write-up/pictures, July 23, 2013)

3.  Planned and initiated activities
Evidence:  It's not easy being in charge (Write-up, October 29, 2012)
The end of an era (Write-up/pictures/audio, May 26, 2013)

4.  Worked collaboratively with others
Evidence:  IB victorious (Write-up, December 6, 2012)

5.  Shown perseverance and commitment in their activities
Evidence:  A greener garden (Write-up/pictures, October 18 2013)
21 - 44 (Write-up/pictures, June 29, 2013)

6.  Engaged in issues of global importance
Evidence:  The road so far (Opening speech for Model UN, May 2, 2013)

7.  Considered the ethical implications of their actions
Evidence:  A trip down memory lane, 13:00 - 15:58 (Video reflection, January 29, 2014)

8.  Developed new skills
Evidence:  Easy as E, F, G (Video, August 19, 2013)

While I hadn't necessarily known it when I began my yearbook journey (Happy new yearbook, October 23, 2012), it quickly became a huge part of my high school experience, a two-year endeavour that I have no difficulty calling my major CAS project.  All my posts about this activity can be found using the yearbook search label.

It's so strange to find that my CAS experience is winding down.  I'm beginning to start new projects outside of the framework of CAS -- a literature blog with a one-hundred-book challenge for 2014, a physics enrichment class, a position writing for a Canada-wide student issues site -- and it's odd to not have a yellow sheet to sign or a reflection to write.  Before I started IB, I hadn't thought CAS would affect me much.  I was already the girl involved in way too many extracurriculars; I didn't need a push to get involved.  But over these two years I've found that CAS is so much more than just doing things.  It's about reflecting on what you've done, and using those reflections to improve how you see the world and find solutions in the future.

I might not have any "I wouldn't have done that if it wasn't for CAS" memories, but this blog is full of things I wouldn't have realized if it wasn't for CAS.  We learn by doing, but we learn more by reflecting on what we've done.  If I had to choose, I'd say that's the most important lesson I've learned through Creativity, Action, and Service.

A trip down memory lane

After extended, theory of knowledge, and works in translation essays, who has fingers left to type a CAS reflection?  And thus, an idea I stole from Jessica:  reflection à la video.  Although I did start to lose my voice towards the end, so perhaps that's karmic retribution for my attempt to save my fingers from further hardship.

I may have been shirking my blogging duties, but I think this video does a pretty good job summing up this past summer/autumn/winter and my CAS experience over that time.  In case I said it a bit quickly, the url for my Junior Achievement website is crhsja.wix.com/dechameleon.  If you decide to check it out, you'll get to see the adorable logo I mentioned.  Tempting, no?

Raising the roof

Our shed project for Camp Kier is really coming along.  We've had a half-dozen or so build sessions since I've last written, and the shed itself is nearly finished.  The walls are up, the siding is being put in place, and on Thursday, Kathleen, Liam, and I were tackling the roof.  I'm not someone who is afraid of heights per se, but working on that roof sure was an experience.  There were beams in place; our task was to put on the sheets of wood that would make the roof look like an actual roof, and that task consisted of sitting on top of a half-built, nauseatingly steeply-inclined roof while building the rest.  And not always sitting; to get to the low points of the roof, we had to lie down on our stomachs to hammer in those nails.  It was really exciting, to be honest; while sawing wood and measuring lengths had been a necessary part of a project that we were doing for a good cause, working on that roof felt like an experience in itself.  Once the wood sheets on one side of the roof were in, we stapled on a black, tarp-like sheet, and then we attached plastic corners on either side of the roof to which the siding would connect to create that water-tight effect people look for in a shed.  This process involved me shimmying across the beams of the unfinished half of the roof; on this side there were no wooden sheets at all, just the skeleton of rafters.  I haven't brought my camera since the first day, so unfortunately I don't have any pictures to spice up this wall of text, but hopefully I'll be able to snap a few next session or the session after to display our finished product.  We started shingling the roof last day; all that's left is to finish those and the siding, and our little shed will be complete!

It takes an IB class to build a shed

A little while back, a kids' camp was vandalized:  fires started in the woods; their shed smashed to pieces; ATV tracks left everywhere, that sort of thing.  Our IB coordinator approached our class with this news, and a group of us decided to participate in building a new shed for the camp.  I'm not a carpenter by any stretch of the imagination - the most I've ever done is build a paper towel dispenser in ninth grade industrial arts class - so it is a pretty neat learning experience.  Our first session saw me, Jessica, Mallory, Sawini, Patrick, Cassy, and Dylan building the foundation and floor of the shed, with the help of Mr. Pierlot and our school's industrial arts teacher, of course.  Sawini and I were in charge of cutting all the beams with a power saw, which was pretty neat, and I also had the opportunity to operate a nail gun and swing a hammer.  I also helped put on the sheets of wood that were to be the floor; they were quite a bit heavier than you'd anticipate.  Additionally, I got to use this cool chalk device:  when you pull the string taut and snap it, a perfectly straight chalk line appears on the flooring.  I also chronicled the experience with my camera (although since I was behind the lens I don't feature in any of the photographs), so here's some snapshots of day one of shed building:

A greener garden

I can't believe it has been so long since I've made a CAS blog update, although September was a pretty hectic month.  I've been working on university and scholarship applications, which has taken up a large portion of my time, not to mention extended essay, CAS, and all the regular IB work and internal assessments.  However, CAS has been going well so far this school year.  I've joined Junior Achievement and the school's Improv Club as two new creativity projects, and I'm continuing on with many of my ongoing activities like yearbook, newspaper, and gardening.  I'll save the rest for another post, but here's an update on what's going on with the school garden.

Since the year began, we've picked back up with watering the garden twice weekly.  It managed well over the summer, all things considered, although our cactus bit the dust.  Last week we stayed after school to work on planting a lot of new plants into the garden, and it's starting to look superb.  Here are some photos from our planting session:

Next on the docket is to paint the front wall of the garden, although the art committee must select the colours and design before we can get to work.  Hopefully they'll get around to doing that soon, and we'll be able to further brighten our green, green garden.

21 - 44

This week has been a whirlwind of yearbook.  It seems like it's all I've been doing, all day, every day, mixed up in a sprinkle of work and getting ready for Shad.  Out of the eighty-eight pages in the book, twenty-one I've done completely myself, and I've had a hand in editing forty-four more.  And we're still not done!  The grade 10/11 school pictures still have to be put in once the grade lists are secured, and that's another eleven pages.  There's a few others here and there left to do, but none that I can do myself.  One is the school Athletic Banquet, which Mr. Toms requested to do himself, same with the Confederation City Classic tournament page, and the library monitors/newspaper page.  Then there's the staff pictures, but aside from that, the book is completed.  It's been so much work... most nights I haven't got to sleep before midnight, as I'm up late working on or fixing up pages.  But it's almost done, and all my and the rest of the committee's hard work will soon pay off.  What follows are the proofs of some of the pages I've created:

For the rest, well, you're going to have to buy a yearbook (42$, or 45$ with a signature page).

Now, there's one dilemma that I'd like to mention that I came across when it comes to creating a yearbook.  It's deciding on the pictures.  When I was a little kid, I played soccer every summer, and ringette every winter.  At those younger levels of sports, it was usually just kids' parents who coached.  When it came time to decide captains, the kid whose parent was coach always ended up on that list, but whenever my dad took his turn coaching, he never let me be captain, because he didn't want to play favourites.  I always felt cheated about that; I was one of the better players, and objectively, I probably should have been captain that year.  But anti-favoritism can be just as problematic as favoritism, and in trying to not be biased, often one goes just as far in the opposite direction.  I am long over not getting to be captain of my ringette team when I was eleven, so why I am telling this story?  Well, when it comes to choosing the pictures for the yearbook, the same ethical dilemma exists.  You're inclined to put more pictures of your friends in the yearbook, but that wouldn't be fair.  But often in attempting to not be biased towards your friends, you're biased against them, and then they don't get in the book at all.  And, like as not choosing your daughter as captain because she's your daughter may be just as problematic as making her captain because she's your daughter, so is putting or not putting pictures of your friends in the yearbook because they're your friends.  So that line was something that was in the front of my mind every time I dragged a little picture square over onto the digital page.  All in all, I think my pages ended up being unbiased.  My friends and people I know aren't completely excluded, but their presence isn't any greater than anyone else's.  The fact that it is something one must be conscious of means it can't be 100% perfect, but in the end, I think it is fair for everyone.

So, that's yearbook 2012/2013.  By mid-July the book should be finished completely, although I will be away at Shad Valley by that point.  The books will then be delivered in the fall, and I'll be sure to report in on the finished product.  Until then, get ready for a chronicle of my Shad Valley adventure in Saskatchewan -- coming tomorrow to a blog near you.

Year-end yearbook

I've been extremely busy lately (most recently with my year-end exams, and the week prior I was away in Ontario attending an invitational math seminar) but CAS waits for no man (or girl).  Today marked our last exam, with all the rest of the school having finished yesterday or earlier, and now that school is out of the way, our final yearbook deadlines are fast approaching.  The signature pages were delivered last week, but the book itself still has a lot of work to be done on its pages, especially with regards to recent or upcoming events like Prom and Graduation.  So, even though school is over, I'll be heading back there Friday morning to work on finishing the book along with Jessica, Adrian, and Mr. Toms.  Despite the work ahead, I think things are going along well.  We have pretty much all the pictures we'll need, save for grad, at least to the best of my knowledge, and I think the final product is within our reach.  That said, I don't know if Jess and I are going to be able to take on this commitment again next year.  So many pictures and so much work needs to be done towards the end of the year at the time we'll be writing IB exams, and so we may need to pass on the bulk of the responsibility to another set of grade eleven students.  Additionally, we've been invited to take the role of editors on the school newspaper this coming year, which while being a large commitment for most of the year would allow us to finish prior to exams.  A step down from one commitment and a step up in another might be a good swap for us; the timing fits better, and it lets us try our hand at a different skill set.  Still, nothing is set in stone, and I guess it will all depend on what next September brings.

The end of an era

As was mentioned in my previous entry about the school newspaper, the grade twelves just graduated.  And, as is the tradition amongst IB students in our school, it is the duty of the grade eleven students to buckle down and plan their end-of-CAS banquet.  Leading up to the banquet on Wednesday we organized everything:  food, decorations, set-up... I was on the hosting and electronics committees.  We were all a bit worried about how it would turn out, but somehow some tablecloths, balloons, twinkly lights, and tulips turned the school cafeteria into a wondrous place that was not quite as grungy as the school cafeteria.  Honestly, it ended up looking rather nice.  After we were done with set-up, we went and got pizza, so that was also a perk.  Then we were back to greet people at the door, direct them on where to go, and also take in and out food from the kitchen.  I was only supposed to host, but I ended up helping carrying a lot of the food around as well.

As I mentioned before, I was also in charge of electronics, so during set-up Adrian and I worked to get the projector and sound systems working.  Mostly that entailed using pre-calc textbooks to get the projector at the right angle.  My other job in electronics was to get the music ready, and the soundtrack I made was a combination of graduation-ish songs and scores from musicals, since the 12s were big Les Mis fans.  I figured finding grad music would be quite easy, but I was really surprised about how long it took me to make my 20-song playlist.

CAS Banquet from Lazulia on 8tracks Radio.

I was told we'd be able to hook the iPod directly into the sound system, but as it turned out we only had a CD player to work with, so there was some last-minute CD burning to do.  Aside from that, I'd say things went pretty smoothly.  It's hard to imagine a year from now we'll be in the twelves' place... actually, it's kind of a scary thought.  By that point we'll have applied to universities, written IB exams, chosen programs... it's hard to imagine that a year from now the direction of our lives will be planned out so much more than they are now.  So much will change in a year.

Next year, we'll be the grade twelves, and we'll be sharing our hallway, our classrooms, and our parties with a new set of students.  The fourteen people we've grown to know will be off at university, doing completely new and different things.  And soon enough, we'll be them.

Still, we're not quite there yet.  In the words of one of the stereotypically-cheesy grad songs included on my playlist, "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."

 

Growing up

Jess has made another video, and I thought that it showcases just how much our plants have grown over the last few days!  That footage was just taken today, so you can catch a glimpse of Harini and I planting some black penny nemophilas that I bought for 1.89$ at Walmart.  Today we were also discussing what we should do for the mural.  Debate got pretty heated:  from what I gathered, there were firm proponents of both Lion King and fish, although I somehow doubt either will end up being the finished product.  I mostly remained uninvolved and spent the lunch hour planting those nemophilas, but it looks like I'll still get a chance to have my say seeing as we have yet to reach a consensus.  I think it will probably be fine no matter what we do, but I don't know... I can't say I'm exactly an advocate of painting the Lion King on the wall of our high school, and I don't really see what fish have to do with a garden.  But I don't have a real emotional investment one way or the other, and I'm sure it will end up looking great.  In other gardening news, under the tutelage of Ms. McBurney I've been learning quite a lot.  Our zinnias and geraniums have been growing alright, but I now realize that's kind of a miracle seeing how many things we did wrong.  Pots should be filled all the way to the brim with dirt to provide air flow and the proper amount of light, soil should be saturated with water before the seeds are planted, much smaller containers should be used for seeds, and the containers should be covered with a plastic bag until germination, just to name a few of our mistakes.  As a group, we've also been overwatering the plants a bit, and while none of mine have been affected, some of Jessica's ended up dying due to oversaturation.  I've tried to keep all that in mind while planting the nemophilas, and I think my level of gardening knowledge has come quite far in such a short amount of time.  Just looking at the photo below makes me cringe now... what was I thinking?

Did I mention that is the wrong type of dirt?

Spring has sprouted

Yesterday we stayed at school after our biology exam to work on the garden, and we got a surprisingly large amount of work done.  The new soil was finally put into the garden, I must have mixed six buckets of fertilizer (3 scoops of powder for 3 gallons of water), and we moved around a bunch of plants that we had been planning on doing for a while.  Linus was moved over a bit, Shrek the cactus was taken out of his pot and actually planted in the garden -- held up by a stylishly rustic stick.  We took Harini out of the greenhouse and planted her in the garden proper; she's looking a lot better, but compared to the vibrant green plants in the garden and the new rich, dark soil, she's looking kind of yellowish.  But she'll perk up, we're sure.  The fertilizer will help, we hope, and we're also going to spray her and the other plants next week, since Adrian and Ms. McBurney fear that they might have scales.  We also took one of the vines back to the greenhouse to cut up, place in water, and attempt to create some new plants.  Speaking of, quite a few of the things we've planted in the greenhouse have begun to sprout!  The fenugreek, the geraniums, the zinnias, the snow peas, the basil, one of the thyme plants, Jessica's black eyed susan... all of them are starting to poke their heads out of the dirt.  The pictures below were taken by Jess a few days ago, but the plants have grown even more since (particularly the fenugreek there on the left).

I think I'll try defying gravity

Jess made a video when we were in watering the plants today, so I thought it'd make a nice complement to my status update from yesterday.  We didn't do any planting; we just watered the lot, emptied the drip buckets (the ceiling has a horrible number of leaks), replaced a few of them with larger containers, and rocked out to the Wicked soundtrack.  Also, it was during our watering session that we got our campus assignments for Shad Valley emailed to us!  I'm going to be spending my summer in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and I'm super excited for all that the future holds.

How does your garden grow?

Answer:  Rapidly, and with a wide variety of cute names.  Of course, the plants themselves have not started to grow yet, but our array of seed-filled pots and containers has gotten bigger and bigger over the last few days.  Yesterday we started small:  Adrian and Victoria planted four basil plants (all named Basil), and Mallory, Harini, and I planted five geraniums and three zinnias (with adorable and amazing names).  Mallory's two geraniums bear the moniker of Batman characters, Harini and I gave ours the names of Merlin actors/characters (Merlin, Arthur, Colin Morgan, and Bradley James), and then Harini named the last two after Mallory and I, as revenge for the jade plant.  That was just during lunch yesterday, so we didn't exactly have a ton of time to plant.  Today, however, we stayed after school to water the garden, and since we had a fairly large group of five, some of us planted while others dealt with the watering.  That is to say, Jess and Victoria handled the watering, Adrian performed a transplantation of Increase who is now safe and sound in a pot in the greenhouse, and Harini and I filled our boots with planting (and naming.  Mostly after Merlin characters).  We'd decided to plant snow peas and hot peppers in the greenhouse (possibly to sell to teachers, depending on how well they do), and since I'd found out snow peas wouldn't do that well in a normal pot because they need space to lean, I'd hoped to be able to find a window box lying around in the botany lab.  Unfortunately, there weren't any, but we made do with two large circular pots in which we planted a bunch of snow pea seeds.  Victoria had not yet left for watering at that point, so she helped me fill the planters with soil and named one, and I named the other "Viceroy" in her honour.  Next we planted hot pepper seeds in eight small pots (we discovered that they need to be grown that way, and then we can transplant the ones that grow into bigger pots), and as it was just Harini and I by this point, they all pretty much ended up Merlin-ified.  After that, we planted some normal peppers, some thyme, and some coriander.  Earlier today at lunch I was absent because I had an orthodontist appointment, but the rest of the group was working in the botany lab then as well, and Harini planted some fenugreek and Jessica a black-eyed Susan.  And that rounds out our planting to date, save for Increase Jr, a small portion of Increase that Adrian is attempting to grow into a new plant in Mallory's "Cactus County".  It's all very exciting; we'll probably be planting a bit more once we know exactly what we want to put in the garden proper, but still!  What we've got so far has already been so much fun to do, despite being a lot of work.  We need to make sure all the plants stay watered, and every plant has their own special conditions that we must ensure they receive; for example, the geraniums need to be kept in darkness until they germinate, so we keep plates over top of their pots except for when they are being watered.  It all doesn't seem like work though; it's just something new and exciting and worthwhile.  We'll have to be even more diligent coming in at lunch hours now to make sure all our plants stay watered, but I'm quite looking forward to it.  I hope it's not too long before all our seeds begin to sprout!

My friend Harini and my other friend Harini

We're beginning to get used to the gardening routine, but we still don't have all the kinks worked out yet.  Fertilizing, new plants, the mural project... all of that is going to be taken care of after we return to school after March Break.  Although we still have a lot of new things to deal with coming soon, I think we're beginning to get a handle on the basics.  Twice a week we've been watering the garden, a debacle that takes about an hour to an hour and a half and requires three or four people.  Right after school the group of us go down to the chem lab to borrow the keys that unlock the greenhouse door.  Before we even think about heading down to the lobby to water the garden, there's a whole routine we've got to take care of back in our greenhouse home base.  First off, we have Harini, named by Adrian in honour of our good friend Harini, who is not in IB and therefore not part of the CAS project, but equally awesome and who sometimes helps us out with our greenhouse duties at lunch.  In any case, Harini the jade plant had been in one of the science labs, and was on the brink of death due to neglect.  As we'd been given access to the greenhouse (as Mallory said, the botany lab is like we're in a video game and we unlocked an achievement that allows us into a new area), we relocated Harini there where we can keep her watered and healthy.  After she has recovered we are going to plant her in the lobby garden.

I wonder which Harini this is?

So, watering her is one of our botany lab duties.  The second is tending to Mallory's cacti.  She bought the seeds at a plant shop a few weeks ago, and now we have a number of pots that may very well sprout cacti sometime in the not-too-distant future.  After we finish all the greenhouse watering, we have to squeegee the floors so that all the excess water goes down the drain, as water just tends to pool everywhere in the greenhouse (it's not helped by the way the ceiling leaks).  After all that is done, we can finally grab the stepladder and make our way down the hall to the lower portion of the lobby garden.  Using the stepladder, we can climb into the bed and pick up any garbage that has been tossed in (which is typically an unfortunately large amount).  We also empty the wishing well that Adrian has instated, putting the change in a container in the botany lab to be donated to charity.  After the garden is cleaned, we get the hose out of the janitor's room and raise it up to the upper level, where we rain down the water on the garden from above.  This takes up the bulk of our time, since the garden needs a considerable amount of water.  After that, we pull the house back down to the lower level and water it from that direction, ending by washing all the dirt spray off the walls.  After that is done, we put the hose away, sweep and mop the floors, and return our supplies to the botany lab.  And that's the watering, done for another half week, save for the lunch hours when we must go into the greenhouse to tend to Harini and the cacti.  Now that we've just gotten into the swing of things, everything is going to get messed up when we return to school next week and start dealing with planting, fertilizing, and fixing up walls, but I'm still looking forward to it.  This gardening project is both a lot of work and a lot of fun, and I don't think there is any place in the school more peaceful and lovely than the botany lab.

Getting my hands dirty

We (Mallory, Jessica, Victoria, Adrian, Sawini, Kathleen, and I, along with Ms. McBurney) had our first meeting of the gardening club after school today.  First off we got a stepladder from the greenhouse, grabbed a box of latex gloves from the chemistry lab, and then jumped right into the soil.  Standing in the garden, we found that it was even more disgusting than we had been able to tell from outside, and as you may recall, we had thought it was plenty disgusting already.  Rotting apple cores, over a dozen pens and pencils, and an opened and mushy chocolate bar were just some of the treasures we found half buried in the dirt.  It took as a good while to pick up all the trash and put it in the garbage bin that we had dragged there with us, and after we had finished, we got a rake and worked on getting rid of the many dead leaves that were everywhere.  The plants were in a really rough shape; the only one that was in semi-presentable condition was the fig tree, and there were also two other trees, a cactus, and a nondescript beat-up bush that may have in fact been a second cactus, all in desperate need of some TLC.  While we worked we named the pitiful-looking plants -- the two trees of the same type were Charlie Brown and Linus, the bush/cactus was Increase (after Increase Mather of the Salem Witch Trials fame and the nickname we have for our history teacher), the cactus was Shepard or Shep (Mallory named it this in honour of the protagonist of Mass Effect, although Kathleen misheard her and so it also goes by Shrek), and we named the fig tree Kim in honour of Ms. McBurney.  There were also some vine-like things in the back, but they remain unnamed.  While we raked (and seeing as we only had one rake, it was Adrian who did most of the raking), Victoria and I worked on pruning; her with Kim and I with Charlie Brown and Linus.  Charlie Brown was in really bad shape and I had to prune it down almost all the way to the ground, although while I was working on Linus, some of the others managed to salvage what was remaining and lift it up by securing it with a hair elastic, so it actually ended up not looking too bad.  After we had filled the compost bin with dead branches, we set to work on watering.  The entire bed was really dry and dusty; as soon as we had gotten the hose working and water finally splashed the dry soil and fig leaves, there was an intense and pleasing scent of petrichor.  We spent a good half hour watering from the main level of the school, showering water down on the bed below and coating the leaves of the fig tree to dust them off (as Ms. McBurney told us, dust on the leaves is bad for the plant as it inhibits photosynthesis), and afterwards we went down to the lower level to continue watering and clean the dirt splatters off the wall.  We learned how to put away the hose, Jess and Sawini took turns mopping the floor, and when everything was said and done, we had spent an hour and a half tending the plants.  It didn't feel that long at all -- it was tons of fun and we had visits from many of our teachers, fellow students, and other staff at the school who stopped to talk with us for a few moments (our biology teacher even brought over her new puppy!).  We also got a lot of things done and, as we were leaving, we looked down at the garden from the third floor.  The plants were so much greener now, and the soil was a rich, earthy black instead of a dusty brown.  It just looked infinitely healthier, and if we can make so much of a difference in just one session, I'm excited to see how much more beautiful the garden will be when we're done with it.  On Tuesday we will be staying after school to water the plants again and apply some fertilizer, so I have my fingers crossed that, after the weekend, the plants will still be looking perky and not have reverted to their previous state.

Our new spring lineup

This CAS season features some old favourites as well as new and exciting premieres.  Classics return such as newspaper and yearbook, and we'll also be seeing the swan songs of 750 Words and provincial ringette, both reaching their crescendos in April.  Now, what's new on the horizon?

First off, there is Model UN, which will run from May 3rd to May 5th and entail much preparation prior to the actual event.  I have been accepted into the school delegation of twelve students, although we have yet to hear back with regards to which country everyone will be representing and on which committee they'll be.  My first choice was Tanzania, and I somehow doubt that will be a popular selection, so I hope I will end up receiving that option, although I am sure no matter with what country I end up I'll learn some fascinating things about both it, the world, and the issues that affect the two.  My first choice of committee was ECOSOC, and its topic this year is "Commission on Sustainable Development", so I think I would learn a lot about both the current critical situation with the environment and also how developing countries regard this issue.  Recently we had a guest speaker into our school to talk about climate change, and while what is going on in our world today is undeniably terrifying, I think it is definitely something about which we are better off being informed than remaining blissfully ignorant.  My second committee choice is "A Reconsideration of the Responsibility to Protect", which is an ethical issue that I find fascinating and would love to learn more about.  It's something that is so hard to wrap your head around, and I'm not sure where I stand.  I'm reminded of all those sci fi programs and futuristic novels where the most important rule of everything is that you shouldn't interfere (think Star Trek's prime directive), yet when one is talking about things like genocides and mass killings, how is it ethical to remain uninvolved?  All in all, it would be a fascinating thing to learn more about, and while I'd still rather be accepted to ECOSOC, being part of either committee would be a great experience.  The school delegation will be meeting sometime in the near future to learn about our country and committee assignments, and I can't wait!

Secondly, we have what is going to be my major CAS group project, fitting into the realms of service and creativity:  something we've been calling alternately the "gardening club" and the "school beautification project".  It has a number of components (only befitting of a major group project), and I suppose it would be most logical if I told them in the order in which we developed them.  First of all, our chemistry teacher used to teach botany, although this year there wasn't enough student interest and the botany class wasn't offered.  Despite not having a class, it's her responsibility to tend to the sad-looking indoor garden we have in the lobby, although with all the other important things she has to do, fixing it up isn't something she has either the time or energy to do on her own.  That's why a group of us decided to start a gardening club under her leadership:  we'd have access to the school greenhouse, we'd water the three nearly-dead trees and the sad looking cactus, we'd learn which plants grow best under our school's conditions, we'd clean all the trash out of the bed as it is currently being used like one big garbage can, and we'd use our newly gained knowledge of plants to grow flowers and the like in the garden.  That sounds like a nice CAS activity in itself, but what really propelled it into the big group project level was what happened when we went to go check out the bed.  It was a mess -- even more so than we had thought.  The paint on the wall was peeling all the way back to concrete due to water damage, chocolate milk containers and muffin wrappers abounded, and one of the trees was no more than a few sticks surrounded by dead leaves.  But the garden layout was interesting:  on the bottom level of the school, there is a wall in front of the garden and you are standing below soil level, and then there is also a wall behind the bed above your head on the lower level but under you if you're standing on the school's main floor.  Looking at this, we were struck by how perfect it would be for a mural.  So, that's our plan.  We'll do all the gardening things previously mentioned, but we're also going to learn how to plaster and repair the wall, do it, and then paint two murals.  The one behind the bed will be a foliage or a jungle theme, creating a sort of 3D effect with the real plants that will jump out in front of it, and on the lower wall we'll create an underground scene, with things like tree roots and dinosaur bones and stuff like that.  It's going to be a lot of work, but we have a great team of people (we'll also be opening the gardening club up to anyone else in the school who is interested, although we'll be spearheading the project), and I'm excited to help make the school just a bit more beautiful.  Currently, Adrian is composing a proposal to send to the principal to get official approval of our idea, although she already expressed interest earlier and I strongly believe that she'll give us the go ahead.

 My third new activity is more of a summer preview than an entry to my spring lineup, but it's something that I'm too excited about not to mention.  I've been accepted to Shad Valley, which is a pretty prestigious summer program for high school students focusing on the sciences, leadership, business, teamwork, and innovation; I've already gone through an extremely intense application process just to be accepted.  That in itself was a good learning experience, particularly as it is quite similar with what one might expect to see when applying for universities in grade twelve, but the actual Shad Valley program is going to be a thousandfold more extraordinary.  For one, they're big proponents of the IB program, and they particularly cater to the IB core, including, yes, CAS!  As they write on their website:

Through their active participation in the design/entrepreneurship project that’s a key element of Shad Valley, IB diploma students fully satisfy the Creativity and Action aspects of CAS. Through their involvement in this entrepreneurial endeavor, they build their knowledge, skills and understanding; explore the ethical responsibilities that surround innovation; experience the excitement of inquiry and discovery; build confidence in their ability to initiate change, both as an individual and as a member of a team; practice autonomy and self-reliance; and develop a strong appreciation for their own, and others’ talents. Many schools acknowledge participation in Shad Valley as fully satisfying the Creativity and Action requirements; others allocate partial hours. Because CAS focuses on in-depth experiences, the month-long, residential nature of the Shad Valley program makes it strongly aligned in helping satisfy this requirement.

So that's what's on the docket for summer CAS.  I'm going to be gone all of July for Shad Valley, living on campus and engaging in so many cool activities and learning experiences.  I won't know which campus I will be attending until early April, but my A choices were Waterloo, Queen's, Saskatchewan, and Calgary, so I'm hoping to end up with one of those.

That's what to expect from me over the next few months.  I do have a couple of other activities in mind that are either still in the planning stages or are yet to be approved, but for the most part this is what I'll be looking at in terms of CAS as I enter the home stretch of my grade eleven year.  I'm looking forward to continuing with what I'm already doing, starting these new projects, and getting that satisfied yet melancholic feeling of wrapping up a long running activity.  While school is definitely going to be keeping me busy over the next few months, I'll be sure to make time for all these exciting opportunities!

Hex codes and half-priced Helvetica

Over the last few weeks, we have set foot into a new dimension of our yearbook experience:  page design.  The photography aspect has died down for the moment; at this time of year, there is no sports teams to capture, no school events that need coverage, and it is still too early for club pictures to be of any immediate concern, and we have taken advantage of this lull to finally delve into the realm of book layout that we have been neglecting thus far.  Jessica and I have had a few jobs behind the scenes prior to the grand opening of the yearbook editing website for the entire committee; I've already mentioned the page outline I made a month or two ago, and in addition to that, we've also had to select the colours and fonts to be used in the book.  The colour selection was fairly easy, but choosing the perfect fonts was a difficult decision.  You don't want too many or the book looks cluttered and disjointed, but with too few you don't really have any options to pick from.  We settled on five, and choosing those was no small decision.  Some were really neat, but they were a bit too crazy to be of any practical use, and others seemed too juvenile.  I should also mention that most of the options were essentially facsimiles of existing fonts, made 'completely different' by using a hip name to appeal to a teenage audience.

Case in point:  "Baby Maker"

We ended up going with "Coolvetica" (a shameless Helvetica clone), "Burning Facts" (having a sci-fi, digital clock-ish feel without being too out there), "Modern Art" (Agency FB meets Impact), "Ebony" (an innocent enough sans-serif), and "MacBeth" (a bit more ornate and perfect for graduation and more classy things like that).  We also got the default font, "Lynn" (it's definitely not Times New Roman at all).

A few days ago we had our first layout meeting.  Since I had the outline, I ended up having to organize the handing out of pages, making sure everybody had something to work on and no two people thought that they were in charge of the same page.  I ended up with a pretty eclectic array of pages to work on myself; I decided to do all the dividers so that they would be consistent, and since the software forces you to edit a two-page spread at a time and two people can't be working on the same two-page spread without a lot of technical blunders ensuing, I therefore became responsible for all the odds and ends that happened to be beside a divider:  Student council, best of the year survey, sports candids, and the runners up from the cover contest.  Jessica, Adrian, and I are also teaming up to make the IB page, seeing as we all have a vested interest in making sure it's awesome.

All in all, we managed to get most of the pages accounted for.  Someone is going to have to deal with all the staff, grad, and class pictures, but that won't be relevant until later.  There's also a few sports pages that have yet to be found a home, but as other pages get finished, I'm sure that someone will end up needing something more to work on.

I haven't got to spend a lot of time with the software yet, seeing as I was busy with organizational duties during our computer lab meeting, but from the bit I've got to play around with it so far it seems quite similar to what we used in junior high, although with a few changes.  It'll take a little bit for me to get used to the new format, but hopefully I'll be on my way to mastery in no time.

Swimming in post-its

Things with yearbook have been moving along steadily.  We've decided to hold an art competition to find the perfect cover for our yearbook, a plan that has been approved by administration, so we'll be getting that underway soon.  Other of our ideas were vetoed by the higher-ups; we wanted to make a Facebook group where students could submit their pictures for yearbook use -- carefully moderated, of course -- but unfortunately it was deemed against school policy.  I've been taking some photographs myself lately, both of Movember and Spirit Week, but my current greatest undertaking is creating a comprehensive layout for the book.  Six pieces of paper, eighty-eight small boxes, sticky notes galore, rulers, pens, last year's book, calculators... I quickly found making an outline is no small matter.  It also involved much more math than I'd anticipated; our school has decreased in student population substantially since last year, but with the help of my trusty GDC I was able to determine how many pages I would need for both grad and student photos -- down two of each from last year.  I tried to leave us as much leeway as possible for unknowns that may spring up later in the year, with one extra page for clubs and one-and-a-half extra events pages, and also to give some groups that are usually under-represented in the yearbook a little coverage, such as a split page for drama/art, an IB page, and a full page for student council near the beginning instead of just an entry in the clubs section, not to mention a page for our yearbook committee at the very end.  I tried to deliver on my promise of more fun content as well, with a page reserved for a best of 2012/2013 survey, sports candids, general candids, a page both for chem free and for chem free awards instead of just one split, a page for the runners-up from our cover contest, an extra fun page for either confessionals, imagine-ifs, or whatever other sort of quirky thing we decided to run, plus I still found room to include all the vitals from last year.  Our next committee meeting is tomorrow at lunch, and hopefully everyone will be happy with what I've come up with.  I know we have a few people on the committee who love to hate change, but with any luck they'll like this layout just as much as I do.

CAS keeps right on trucking

Exam period has just wrapped up, so recently time for CAS activities has been tight, and time for blogging about them even more so. Still, even if exams have put a slight damper on my regular posting, I've still had a lot of action (and creativity and service) going on lately on the CAS front. I'll save my progress reports on newspaper and ringette for later posts, and dedicate this one to the latest developments with our yearbook committee. Administration has completely vetoed our hopes of getting the book released in June. It's immensely frustrating, since it is difficult to change things and make the book better when we're supposed to be in control yet someone else is holding the reins, but I guess this is one thing I will just have to let go. It really took a toll on my and Jessica's spirits, though; we'd really hoped to be able to move past an outdated tradition and start a new chapter. But, we can't dwell. If we do dwell on this issue, then we won't get anything done. I just hope we won't have to bend our vision even further to jump through these political hoops. In terms of actual, positive progress, we've formed a yearbook committee, which is great. There is one boy on it that was part of the old committee and keeps insisting that the way they used to do things is the 'proper' way to make a yearbook, and there are a couple of grade twelves who think that their seniority means they should get to call all the shots, but despite such issues I think the committee is quite strong and we'll be able to get a lot done. Jess and I have already taken some pictures of the field hockey team and gotten team lists from the sports coordinators, and we're currently looking into getting a list of all upcoming school events to make a yearbook calendar. Getting photos is currently our top priority, since layout can be done at any point, but you can't take photos of an event retroactively. Still, I'm hoping to be able to have a good discussion with the committee about layout next meeting, with ideas for pages and content that we can get the school involved with and make the yearbook full of memories and uniqueness. We've decided to potentially hold an art contest to select a cover for the book, and Adrian is taking charge of creating a social media page for students to submit their photos for yearbook consideration, so overall I can already feel our changes taking shape. We plan on getting inserts for the book that people can get signed at the end of the year, so we don't have to give up our signing-books dream entirely, so that's also a plus. My next steps are to create the yearbook calendar I mentioned previously, and also take photographs for Movember and Spirit Week, so all in all things on the yearbook front feel altogether quite manageable. There have been some speedbumps, sure, and there's bound to be more, but for now I think we've got things under control.

Happy new yearbook

When I entered high school last year, I quickly became quite disillusioned about the yearbook committee.  Yearbook was one of my favourite extracurriculars throughout junior high, and for good reason.  It was a giant part of the school -- pretty much every student bought one.  The yearbook was fun and amazing and made by the students, creative and memorable and representative of our student identity.  After three years of such an amazing system, I wasn't prepared for the underwhelming flatness of our high school yearbook.  Its only theme is red and white -- our school colours, and every page has pretty much a cookie cutter layout.  A few of my friends and I went to the information meeting for the committee last year, and we were essentially told that the yearbook was not a place for creative thought.  If you're on the committee, you take the pictures you're told to take and you stick them in the place you're told to put them.  That's it, that's all.  We decided to not join the committee after that; it was obviously not the thing for us, but those weren't the only quibbles we had with the yearbook.  You see, unlike with our previous experiences, the yearbook covers up until the very end of the year, saturated heavily with end of year activities such as prom and graduation.  This, while fine in itself, has one unfortunate implication:  you don't get to sign yearbooks.  Throughout junior high, this was the source of so much excitement for students.  Flipping through the crisp new yearbooks when they arrive in June, finding the pictures of yourself and your friends, and most importantly, writing messages in the yearbooks of everyone you know.  That's where the appeal of a yearbook lies, through my experience.  Those are the memories: your and your friends' haphazard scrawls, not just the pictures and text on glossy paper (although those are important too).  As I said, in Intermediate the majority of students bought their yearbook.  Here, in high school, where yearbooks should really matter, only about a hundred are sold out of a student population of 1100.  Yes, the yearbook might miss out on pictures of prom and names of award winners, but those people have their own pictures and their own certificates and plaques to remember these events.  But signing yearbooks; those memories are totally unique.  This is a pretty long preamble for something in which very little has happened as of yet.  In any case, this year the previous yearbook coordinator retired, and no teacher has been willing to fill the position.  Jessica and I saw this as our chance.  We emailed the principal our proposal outlining our plan to create a new yearbook committee and begin a whole new epoch in our school's yearbook history.  The book would be made by the students, for the students, fueled by student input and student creativity.  The principal approved our proposal, except for one thing.  For the past forty years the yearbook has been released in the September of the following year, not in June when they can be signed, and to change that we'd have to get proof that this is what the students want; she is trepidatious in believing that swapping prom and awards pages for the ability to sign yearbooks is a fair trade.  We'll have to get the student body to vote, but I sincerely hope that we'll be able to make this work.  Signing yearbooks are so quintessential; I can't imagine graduating from high school without it.  But I'm getting away from the CAS activity at hand.  Long story short, Jess and I are attempting to conquer the organizational commitment so many teachers and staff have shied away from:  running the school yearbook.  With the help of our trusty teacher supervisor Mr. Toms and a committee of students that we have yet to interview, we shall succeed in making the school yearbook a product heralded from every corner of our school, something purchased, treasured, and signed by every student, and with input from the same.  We shall... stay after school tomorrow to take pictures of the field hockey championship, since nobody has taken any pictures of any school sports or activities throughout any of September or October.  Running the yearbook will be a daunting, time-consuming task, but I know we can do it!