Reconsidering the right to protect

Despite having slept for ten hours last night, I am still exhausted from Model UN.  One a.m. bedtimes and six o'clock alarms tend to do that to a person, I guess.

All and all, Model UN was amazing.  I was extremely unsure of what to do in our first session, but seeing everyone else passing notes to the pages, I decided just jumping in and going with it outweighed the risk of messing up.  And it really did.  During the opening speeches, I sent notes to Egypt, South Africa, and the Ukraine, three countries that had stances similar on the issue to mine, and I got replies from all saying they'd like to discuss our positions further during the unmoderated caucus.  I also got a note from Togo, who agreed with Tanzania's stance and was impressed with my opening speech.  When a moderated caucus was motioned for later on, I immediately went over and talked to Ukraine.  While we did share similar views on the employment of peacekeeping troops, she was not interested in aligning herself too strongly with the African nations, so we went our separate ways.  I then met up with South Africa, and our two countries agreed strongly on the issue.

Later on, Ethiopia invited us to join an alliance between her, Egypt, Togo, Russia, China, and Myanmar, which we accepted.  Soon we found our committee polarized between two groups:  the western countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, who believed that the R2P doctrine should entitle them to "help" states suffering conflict by using military force, and the other countries who feared Western intervention.  In the case of Tanzania, both America's war against Iraq in 2003 and the fact that NATO had abused their authorization to invoke R2P in the 2011 situation in Libya to conduct over 7000 airstrikes and arm the civilian rebellion caused a distrust of the motives of Western powers in such conflicts, and a desire to pursue resolutions in which it is regional powers who are providing aid in such situations.

Later on, our group splintered again, with Russia, Sudan, China, and Myanmar splitting off to create their own draft paper based around their desire to never have any outside intervention ever, be it from Western or regional powers.  Our ideas began to take shape, with our alliance headed by Egypt, and Brazil taking the lead on the drafting of our working paper.  Two of the clauses that ended up included in our final resolution were written by me, which also was kind of cool, and I had a hand in the editing and revising process as well.

Within our group, a bloc formed between myself, Ethiopia, Togo, Rwanda, and South Africa, as we as African nations were in a very similar situation and shared the same reservations about the possibility of our interests being ignored when the rest of our alliance attempted to garner the support of other countries.  This fear intensified when it came time to sign on as sponsors, and none of the five of us were allowed a position.  Instead, Brazil and Egypt sponsored, as well as Saudi Arabia, who had just joined on to the working paper.  Why should the five of us, who had been there since the beginning and had no small part in shaping the clauses and preamble of the working paper, be refused sponsorship?  Add to the fact that the three sponsors were male and the five of us were female, and we understandably felt that the situation was a bit unfair.

Despite this and the fact that the three sponsors continually met and discussed the paper behind our backs, we managed to talk our sponsors out of the majority of proposed amendments that did not suit the interests of our countries by using the unspoken suggestion of aligning ourselves with the Western alliance.  At the end of the day, our finished paper was a strong resolution that well reflected the interests of us African countries, and in the final vote it won out over the West's paper.  I spoke more than a few times during moderated caucuses, supporting our paper and pointing out the shortcomings of our opponents', and while my oral graces were by no means extraordinary, I think all in all my performance was supportive of our cause.  Afterwards, our committee had an award ceremony, and I won the category of "Most Enthusiastic."  There's something to be said in trying one's best, I suppose.

I also had a blast hanging out with my friends (including my roommate, Harini-of-jade-plant-fame), and both the car ride there and back was thoroughly enjoyable, despite its length and the fact that we were all exhausted on the return trip.  Supposedly the organizers will be sending our school our passed resolutions sometime in the indiscriminate future, so whenever that event arrives rest assured I will be uploading our magnum opus, as well as any pictures I deem not too horrible to be seen by the human race.

I yield the remainder of my time to the moderator.

The road so far

Tomorrow the rest of the school delegation and I leave for Model UN.  I'm pretty excited; first for the five hour car ride with some of my good friends, and secondly for Model United Nations itself.  I've learned quite a bit about Tanzania over the course of my preparation, and about the issue of R2P, although I'm sure this weekend will be filled with hectic research between sessions to try and learn more about whatever topics my fellow committee members bring to the floor.  In any case, here is what I have written for my two-minute opening speech:

Mr. Moderator, Madame Director, Honourable Delegates, it is my honour to partake in the SOCHUM committee debate regarding the right to protect on behalf of the United Republic of Tanzania.

It is one of the utmost priorities of the URT to both safeguard the sovereignty, integrity, and independence of our nation, while also defending human rights, freedom, democracy, justice, and equality, both within our borders and throughout the world. We attest that the promotion of good neighbourliness, African Unity, and the support of the UN in its endeavour for peace, economic development, and international security are of the greatest importance.

It is critical that the United Nations carefully reconsider its current stance on the issue of the right to protect. In 2009, the URT, and many other honourable delegates, sponsored resolution A/RES/63/308 at the sixty-third session of the United Nations, deciding to continue consideration on the responsibility to protect, and the time for that consideration to turn to action is now.

Since that resolution, the international community's commitment on the right to protect was put to the test with the 2011 situation in Libya, after thousands of civilians were killed and countless more deaths were possible. The decision of the UN Security Council on this matter was to authorize NATO to protect Libyan civilians by any means necessary. In this crisis, NATO armed the rebellion and carried out over 7000 airstrikes, both actions that put the civilian population at risk.

This must not be considered the right to protect; like the US's war against Iraq beginning in 2003, these actions are not condoned by the URT. It is the undeniable duty of the international community to ensure the safety of the peoples of the world, but that safety should be ensured by peaceful means, and with those peoples as the primary priority, not the economic interests of NATO or the West.

The URT is proud to have over a thousand peacekeeping troops serving in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, Lebanon and Sudan, and hundreds more engaged in peacekeeping efforts in the current situation in Syria. The United Republic of Tanzania believes that such peacekeeping efforts are key towards achieving the proper balance of national sovereignty and the protection of human rights on the international scale.

Thank you, I yield the remainder of my time to the Moderator.

I'm sure I'll have more to say about Model UN later in the weekend!

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?

A hundred days

Wow... I'm still kind of shell shocked.  I just finished my very last entry on 750 Words, marking the final day in an unbroken chain of a hundred days, and the final word in immense sea of a hundred thousand words.  Just... well, wow.  My entry today was a goodbye letter of sorts to the site and a reflection on my experience, so maybe I'll just quote a bit of that instead of writing a whole new blog post now.

...This was an amazing experience, and it gave a lot to me.  But now this chapter is over, and it is time for the next page to begin.

You've helped me so much, seven hundred and fifty words.  You got me writing again.  I think my typing is so much better now -- not that it was too shabby before, but I can write seven hundred and fifty words faster now than I could ever have dreamed on day one.  You can tell by how long it took me to get the cheetah badge; before that I had not grown enough.  Every day I was stretched a little bit farther than I was the day before, and now see how far I can reach.

And the choices you've helped me make.  Just writing out my thoughts... helping me put them in order... you made me find the time for that, and it has been invaluable.  Just recently I came into my entry with a jumbled mind and no idea which was the path for me, but by the time I was finished, my knotted thoughts had been put to the page and I could see clearly [...] what I really wanted.  I think, even after I'm long done this challenge, whenever I have a problem I can't fathom out, here is where I'll come to solve it... And when I'm finished, after my thoughts have all been lined up straight and my nerves collected, I'll know what I should do.  And when the new page loads and I see the stats for the day, I'll see the little black icon telling me I have a streak of one.  And down below I'll see I once wrote for a hundred days, and that I once wrote a hundred thousand words, and I will smile, and remember all this time that was and that maybe someday will be again.  I enjoyed this.  I enjoyed it very much.  I feel like I can write so much more; that I can think so much more.  That I can sort out my thoughts; that writing is my sanctuary again.  Or maybe for the first time.  I thought when I began this exercise that I was refinding something I had lost, but maybe that is not true.  I've written more in these past hundred days than I likely ever had before in my life, even in the days where I was newly enamored with words and writing and all its wonders.  No, this was something new.  I was creating a new spark inside myself; setting my feet and fingers down a path untraveled.

...The last page.  I still can't believe it.  A hundred days, a hundred thousand words.  It's just incredible.  Extraordinary.  And I've been going on for so long about an adventure, a journey, an odyssey, but maybe this was my adventure all along.

It wasn't across the Earth.  It was always here, dimensionless, on this simple page of black and white.  But it was a journey through time, from 2012 to here.  A hundred days it took for me to complete it, and have I come full circle, or in a straight line?  Am I far from where I began, a stranger in a brave new world, or has my wanderlust been satiated, and I'm back home, safe in my hobbit hole?

I'm not a big believer of the cyclic school of historical thought, so I hope that it is the former.  I am a different girl than I was a hundred days ago, and a hundred days from now I will be a different girl than I am today.  That's how time works; it's one long and twisting journey, one that never stops until your final day...

Yeah, I know that got pretty hammy.  And I ramble on like that for over three thousand words.  But honestly, I was getting pretty emotional over this; I've been on 750 Words every single day since January 30th, so I guess it just kind of feels like the end of something important.  I'm really glad that I did this activity; there were days that it was my saving grace and days that I felt it was the worst thing in the world, but all in all, it was an amazing experience that helped me improve my writing and typing, engage my creative side, and reflect on all the things that would otherwise just be left jumbled up in my mind.  It's well worth a little bit of ham.

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).

A pithy title about Nationals

So, here I am.  It's been a long journey to this point, and for a while I wasn't even sure I was going to make it  -- just look at my last post on the subject.  But I'm here, and I'm glad I didn't miss it.  So, how did I get around the trials and tribulations that I brought up last time?  A bit was luck:  seeing as we're in IB and our course runs all year, midterms aren't always that big a deal and we didn't end up having exams in every subject.  In English and History we're just having a work period for ongoing projects that it isn't extremely critical to attend, and in French we have an oral assessment that only lasts around fifteen minutes and cannot be prepared for, so it is not too difficult for me to make it up at a later date.  I am missing a chemistry exam on energetics and a french test, but since it's just the two I feel more confident on my ability to make them up.  My decision was also a compromise; technically, the tournament lasts until Saturday, but I'm returning Thursday evening to make my biology exam and attend math class on Friday.  On one hand, that's still quite difficult as I have to now find time to study while I'm away, but I'd say it is a better option than having to catch up on our new math unit and the biology exam while also doing the chemistry exam, the french test, and my french oral assessment, as well as whatever new material we're covering next week.  In any case, that's all housekeeping.  I suppose I should talk about the tournament.  We arrived on Sunday, and there were some formalities to take care of in the form of accreditation and opening ceremonies.  No games that day, but that was made up for in the days that followed.  Two games on Monday, a game yesterday, two today, two tomorrow... our schedule has been jam packed (although I found some time to make my bio notes after our game last night).  We haven't been doing fantastically well in terms of scores, but that is to be expected at a big tournament like this:  all the other provinces have heaps of players to choose from, and a league of AA teams battle it out all season for a chance to go to Nationals.  Since we have such a small pool of players, we don't have that luxury.  In any case, our first three games were in the opening pool, and we lost them all by the seven goal spread.  After losing in that first bracket, we were bumped down from the medal running into the consolation round.  That may sound like a bad thing, but it means that we're now playing against teams that are more our speed.  Both our games today we played neck and neck with, being tied at half and even leading at some points, but in both we ended up falling apart eventually, losing by five in the first and the full seven in the second.  Our play is improving, though, and I feel optimistic about our game tomorrow.  And what about me, personally?  I think I've been doing alright; I've definitely improved over this year, that's for sure.  In our second game, we scored two goals, and I assisted on both!  Right now I'm completely exhausted and sore all over from so much hard play over the last few days, but I'll get a good sleep and be ready to be up and at them again tomorrow.

Or, you know, I could always just take a snooze on the ice...

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.

We start as fools

Today we received our country and committee assignments for Model UN!  I managed to get my first country choice of Tanzania, although I didn't end up on the ECOSOC committee.  Still, as I mentioned earlier, I'm sure that the Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural Committee on the reconsideration of the responsibility to protect is going to be fascinating.  I don't really know much on the topic or on my country as a whole, so I suppose it is a good thing that we have a month or two to get ready.  As the Tanzanian proverb goes, we start as fools and become wise through experience (see, I'm learning stuff about Tanzania already).  Tonight I'm working on reading the background paper on the SOCHUM committee, which is quite interesting.  It alludes to many historical events, some of which I'm familiar with and others I'm going to have to research a bit about, but truly, it is fascinating.  Another perk about this committee, even though it is not my first choice, is that this is also the committee that Jessica will be serving on, so at least I will know someone.  On the other hand, she is representing Somalia, and I somehow doubt that Somalian foreign policy is one that any country is going to see eye to eye with, but who knows?  I'm still a fool when it comes to Tanzania's political stances, so maybe they and Somalia have more in common than one might figure.  I'm going to be away much of this weekend for a house ringette tournament, but I hope to still be able to find time to do some preliminary research on my country and on the issue.  I feel like I don't really know as much about world events as I would like, and so I think that Model UN is going to be an interesting and eye-opening experience.

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!

Ringette problems

Over the last few months ringette has been going well, but recently I've hit a stumbling block.  We've been having a lot of practices lately in preparation for Atlantics next week, and that likely will be fine.  I will have to miss one day of school (Friday), which I don't want to do at all, but it's just one day and I'll manage to get caught up.  What worries me is what else is on the horizon:  Nationals.  I had always wanted to just go to Easterns, seeing as Nationals is kind of above our paygrade and we likely won't have as many close games than if we went to Easterns.  But the older girls decided right out the gate that for whatever reason they wanted to go to Nationals, and so that's the way it was.  I didn't like it then, and it's even worse now:  while for Easterns I'd likely only miss two days of school, for Nationals I will have to miss an entire week.  And not just any week: The week of April 2nd -- exam week.  I can't miss six major IB tests; I just can't.  I would have to do them right when I get back, and it would be impossible to study while I was there:  I'd be sharing a room with three of my teammates as we are forced to do to increase 'team bonding' and I'll have no time for myself.  Last time I was at a tournament like this I ended up sitting on the top landing of the hotel's back stairwell to read the novel that was assigned for French class.  Trying to study for six big exams is not going to end well.  So what am I going to do?  I don't want to drop provincial ringette entirely; if I tell my coach that I can't go to Nationals he'll blow his top; I can't even take a third option and drop down to the A team that they created to go to Easterns because of some 'roster rule' that states you can only be on one roster per season, even if you leave the other team.  That's a real bummer for me, as all I ever wanted to do was go to Easterns, and if I had known that they were going to make this team later in the season, I would have held out for it in a heartbeat.  I'm caught between a rock and a hard place here, and I have no idea what I'm going to do.

Setting the parameters

Today I reached a streak of 48 days writing on 750 Words, and I have got to say, this second month is much, much harder than the first.  I'm finding it really hard to keep motivated, in part because of my busy schedule, but also because it's quite difficult to keep something going without an end in mind.  My first month was manageable:  I had the tangible goal of writing every day for a month, and along the way I was accomplishing the smaller goals that were rewarded with badges, such as writing for three, five, ten, and thirty days.  Now, however, I've lost those manageable little slices.  The next streak badge is not until I reach one hundred days, and the challenge of writing every day for a month sort of loses its novelty when you already did it the month before.  That's why I think that the reason for my struggle this month is because I lack direction -- I haven't really stated where I'm going with this activity or where my endpoint is -- and I therefore believe that if I decide on that, it will help me be more motivated in reaching that goal.  I need to set the parameters, if you will.

So, what's my plan?  My goal for this activity -- the end product that I'm working towards -- is to write every day for one hundred days, and, while doing this, write a total of a hundred thousand words (so a thousand words, on average, a day).  If when the beginning of April rolls around I end up deciding that I want to renew my deadline and set a new goal, that's fine, but for now, my aim is to keep this up for a hundred days, and continue to improve my writing skills and creativity in the process.  I might be in a bit of a rough patch motivation-wise, but the quality of my writing lately has been higher than usual (which I suppose might explain why I'm beginning to feel a bit inspirationally worn out).  I've been writing a lot of fiction:  a multiple-entry spanning story about a girl coping with the end of the world; the tale of a skier who dies on the mountains; a chronicle of the future told from the perspective of an island, just to name a few.  I've been writing more short stories than I have in years, and it's making me remember why, when I was younger, all I ever wanted to be was a writer.  I have different aspirations now, but I'm really glad that I have this opportunity to get back into fiction writing, because no matter how long I forget about it or for how many years I neglect it, it will always be something I love to do.

Albatross, hamster, and a turquoise horse

Wow.  I cannot believe that I have been writing on 750words every day for the past 34 days.  I have yet to break my streak, and I think that in itself is kind of exceptional.  Doing something every single day is difficult; it's not always easy to put away a twenty-minute or so chunk of time.  Like today, for instance.  I woke up early, went to the university to work on a project, went to work, and I just got home and was supposed to leave again for a party.  But you learn to make time in your daily routine; like now, when I managed to squeeze in my writing between all my other activities.  It is hard to really understand the magnitude of committing to do something everyday until you actually begin, but I don't regret starting this project at all.

Forcing myself to make time for writing has done so many good things for me.  It helps collect my thoughts; it has gotten me into creative writing again; it forces me to reflect on what is going on around me.  Sometimes I spend my entry just whining and complaining.  During the week before exams I used it to help get myself organized with regards to my studying -- I had no idea what I was going to do in what order and was feeling overwhelmed, but by the time my 750 words had been written I felt more relaxed and with a plan in mind.  For the past few days I've written short stories:  today it was about a teenage criminal living in West Vancouver in the year 2028; yesterday it was a tale based on a character from an episode of a television show I had watched; a few days before that it was a psychological thriller about a wall, of all things.  Sometimes I talk about deep stuff like religion or my plans for the future, and sometimes I just ramble on about Jessica's facial expressions while watching Supernatural or talk about today from the perspective of my cat.  I love how individual and diverse this activity is, and I love how it is unlike anything else I have done so far for CAS.  Everything else has been so group oriented:  working to a deadline for newspaper, working as a team for ringette or dodgeball or GISHWHES, organizing a committee for yearbook.  750 Words is just me and my thoughts and the direction my mind takes itself, and forcing myself to make time for this is really helping me in exploring my own motivations.

You may have noticed in the picture up top that I've gotten a few new badges as of late.  The albatross was for writing every day for thirty days, and the turquoise horse was for completing the monthly challenge.  When January began I couldn't really imagine writing every single day; at some point I would be busy or forget and slip up, but thirty one days later I still had not.  Looking at a month from the beginning seems like such a long time -- looking towards the end of February right now seems so far away -- but when you just take it a day at a time, you've reached the end before you even had a chance to blink.  All in all, I'm pretty proud of myself for being able to stick to my commitment and complete the January challenge; on average it takes me twenty minutes to write an entry, so that means that I dedicated over ten hours of my January to writing, and I think that is just incredible.  I've signed up for the February challenge, and while typing this here on February 1st I can't imagine reflecting on these words twenty eight days later in either victory or self-disappointment, at some point I will, and I definitely will try my best to make it the former.  The other of my new badges is the hamster, another of which I'm immensely proud.  It rewards the practice of going ten days without a single distraction, and I've been working really hard to type all my entries in one sitting to force myself to keep my thread of consciousness going.  Sometimes it is hard to push through it, but when I log into my 750 Words account and start my entry for the day, I refuse to take a break until it is finished, and I think managing to push through the fog of writer's block is another accomplishment in and of itself.

Suffice to say my 750 Words adventure is going well as I close the chapter of its first month, and I hope that I can keep this streak going for many more days to come.

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.

Let's see how far we've come

A reflection on my first quarter in IB CAS, to be submitted to my program coordinator. A general summary of my activities thus far are as follows, interwoven with an analysis of my experiences in attempting to reach the program's delineated outcomes.

The first and arguably most substantial of the activities with which I've become involved over this initial portion of the CAS program is yearbook. Last year the school yearbook suffered a notable dearth of student involvement, and upon the retirement of the previous yearbook coordinator last June, September began with no organization whatsoever on who would take responsibility for the 2012-2013 yearbook. Staff were unwilling to shoulder the burden of such a project on their own, and with no central body to organize it, the first few months of school passed with the issue altogether ignored. Throughout junior high school my friend Jessica and I thoroughly enjoyed participating in our school's yearbook committee, but the lack of opportunities for student involvement had left us disillusioned last year. Upon discovering that the book was now in limbo for this year, the pair of us created and submitted a proposal for the formation of a new yearbook committee, and after a time our proposal was ratified.

That is not to say that everything after that point was smooth sailing; on the contrary, I would say that this is the activity in which I have encountered the most obstacles. In any committee one will no doubt find many conflicting personalities, and dealing with the concerns and agendas of a multitude of different people has been without a doubt one of the most difficult and most educational experiences I've encountered thus far in CAS. I've learnt that, no matter how well formulated a plan and how passionately you desire to be able to follow it to its conclusion, when working with others, compromises and sacrifices are inevitable. Initially, our plan had been to make simply an IB yearbook, and it wasn't until that idea had been irrevocably vetoed that we even imagined concerning ourselves with this project. One of our biggest changes we wished to make to the previous yearbook format was to release the book at the end of June instead of the following September to enable yearbook signings, but despite heavy advocacy on our part, that plan was dismissed by school administration.

However, every failure presents a new opportunity, and being shut down in these fashions opened the doors to new possibilities and workarounds. Without being dissuaded from constructing an IB yearbook we would never have dreamed of taking on the entire school yearbook, and being forbade from changing the date of the books' release forced us to entertain new possibilities: we now plan to purchase signing pages that arrive in June and can be attached to the books after they arrive in September, enabling us to have the best of both worlds.

Through yearbook, I've interacted with numerous other people as well, in a more collaborative sense than the vetoing dynamic that comes with trying to sell a proposal to one's higher-ups. Sometimes, working with people on equal footing proves to be even more of a struggle. Some students on our committee desire to keep the book exactly the same as it has always been; others advocate radical changes. Some want a formal and professional book; others want it fun and 'not boring'. Balancing such viewpoints is a large task, particularly when you're in a position of relative authority yet are younger than some of the other committee members, who think that by virtue of their age they should get the last word. Nonetheless, Jessica and I have thus far proved fairly successful in incorporating the ideas of others and our own ideas, as well as keeping things moving and not getting too behind or stagnated. Most fall sports had almost finished their seasons by the time our proposal had been approved, but we still were able to act quickly and get everything photographed that was required, helped in no small part by Mr. Toms, our teacher supervisor. I personally designed the outline for the book, which proved to be no small task, and as a committee we even decided to create a cover contest to garner more student interest and involvement in the yearbook. All in all, thus far my experiences in yearbook have been both a learning experience and a relative success, and I anticipate this feeling will only continue as we get closer and closer to our final deadline and the unveiling of the product that we have been working so hard to provide for our school.

Out of all the CAS activities I've done, only two have reached their completion at this early stage of the program, and they therefore most definitely warrant some discussion. The first of the two was GISHWHES, a week-long experience I undertook along with an assortment of my classmates around Halloween. I was in a sense the leader of this project, and in that way I found it a bit more exhausting than it would have been had I merely played a part. I came across the event online, the offbeat acronym standing for “the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen”. It is an annual event embracing creativity and insanity; in teams of fifteen, one attempts to create the strange items from an oversized list, aiming to accumulate the greatest point total out of all the teams from all across the world. While for most of my teammates the event began when the list was released, my adventure started as soon as I first clicked on that link. My first challenge was to convince fourteen of my classmates to join forces with me, which wasn't as simple as it initially sounds. Some people didn't want to be involved, others were unsure, and the deadline for registration was fast approaching. With mere days prior to the cutoff only a handful of us were registered, and with so many people changing their mind from in to out to in again, I was finding keeping everyone organized hectic enough, and the activity was still yet to begin! There came a point where we realized that we weren't going to have enough people from our class to fill a fifteen-person team, and I eventually had to petition for members from the grade twelve class as well. It was a manic few days as I struggled to get everyone registered in time, but all was well that ended well.

If organization was key during the registration stage, it was even more so once the event began and we were faced with a list of over one hundred and fifty nigh-impossible tasks. I wouldn't have imagined an event so fueled by creativity would require such high levels of careful planning, but that it did. At this point in time we were caught in the thralls of IB, with tests and projects galore, and in the midst of this I was sitting in my room, attempting to create a stop motion film using Playmobil depicting the loading of Noah's ark; Cassy and Sawini were taking stuffed animals on field trips to the grocery store; Jessica was putting a wig on a carefully-carved Jack O'Lantern. We had so much else on our plate to juggle, yet we were taking time out of our precious schedule to engage in such insanity. I think that, above all, that was what struck me most in my GISHWHES experience. More than the organizational skills I was forced to hone, more than the unreal levels of teamwork required, it was this: what I was doing made no sense. I had a history test I could be stressing about, I had a thousand other things on my mind, but I was choosing to spend my precious evening coaxing plastic animals onto ramps made of jewelry containers. And why?

I think that it was in that moment, somewhere between the twentieth and the twenty-first time my first plastic peacock slid back down to the bottom of the ramp when I tried to set its partner down beside it, that I was pondering that question and was suddenly struck by the answer. In life; in the big picture; in ten years from now, the reason you're doing these things is for the experiences. When you're so focused on completing a task for a certain aim, often you can't see the forest for the trees, in a sense. You expect to get from A to B in accomplishing said objective; you often don't notice how the path from A to B can also give you insights into C and D and O. It's when you make time for the things that you have absolutely no time for that you learn the things you don't expect and not merely the objective B that you are planning to reach; to have a balanced life you kind of need to open yourself up to these sort of activities once and a while. I'm not much of an artist, and I'm also a bit more reserved than is required for most of your typical acts of insanity, so I suspected that improving in those two regards would be my B in GISHWHES. And it was, but even more than that I had the opportunity to bond with my classmates, improve my ability to keep everyone on task, and I became what I would consider just a slightly better rounded person. Sometimes you need to take a bit of a break from stressing out over pretty much everything to smell the roses (or dress them up in funny hats), and I'd say that's a pretty important life lesson.

The second of my completed activities was dodgeball, one of my two action activities thus far alongside playing provincial ringette. Dodgeball was a rather short season; our team was comprised of IB kids, and we're far from the school's top athletes, although we did manage to hold our own and do considerably better than the IB team did last year. I suppose there isn't too much to say about our brief dodgeball stint, but I would highlight three parts of the activity as most important towards the aims of the CAS program: teamwork, integrity, and magnanimity. Our team was comprised of students from both the grade eleven and twelve IB classes, and I therefore had the opportunity to get to know better some of the grade twelves that I had previously only known in passing. Working with students in my class is also always a great experience, but obviously much less exclusive to the dodgeball activity. Integrity is also something that dodgeball lends itself to quite well, and it is quite easy and consequence free to take either the high or the low roads. There is a referee, but with so many balls in the fray at one time, they very infrequently call someone out, and so it is therefore up to your own moral conscience whether after being hit to leave the playing field or act like it never happened. I won't pretend that the thought never crossed my mind when playing; nobody likes getting out, especially when you don't want to let your team down, but what really is the point of playing if you're going to cheat to get the upper hand? We may have lost some of our games, but we did so honestly and the ones we won were won of our own skill. Everybody in the tournament was quite magnanimous in victory, bringing me to my final point. Being both a gracious winner and a gracious loser is a very important skill to have, and it's hard not to feel respect for someone who, after defeating you in a close match, will come over and say without a note of smugness or haughtiness, “Thanks for the game! You guys played well.”

I'm also currently partaking in a few other ongoing projects: provincial ringette, as was previously mentioned, as well as writing for the school paper, and participating in a daily 750 words challenge to improve my writing skills. With regards to 750 Words, I've been finding it to provide an interesting perspective into myself in addition to increasing my writing proficiency; by writing a minimum of 750 words for the past twenty four days my total is over twenty two thousand, and upon forcing myself to write such an amount in such a stream of consciousness way I often start exploring thoughts, opinions, and ideas that I had never previously considered. Although I've been doing this exercise for less than a month I'm already seeing a marked improvement in my writing speed and quality, and I truly think that this experience is helping me gain a greater understanding of self.

It's hard to imagine three quarters still remain of the CAS program; it seems as if I have made such large strides already, and I'm excited to see how my current activities progress in the months and years to come, as well as whatever new projects I pick up along the way.

Hot off the press (well, lukewarm)

It's been a while since my last update on the newspaper front, and that means two issues of the Rural Reader have come and gone.  In November I was responsible for writing a review of Reached, the final book in a series that I've been a fan of since the first installment hit shelves back in 2010.  The novel was released right during exam time and my article was due immediately afterwards, so I was under a bit of a time crunch to get it read and reviewed, but it proved to be a good diversion and provided me with a welcome break from studying.  In December I interviewed Ms. Riggs, asking her questions about what she's read, is currently reading, and will read.  It was a less labour-intensive article on my part, but our deadline in December was rather short-notice due to us wanting to have the paper released before Christmas break, and I felt like it was a nice change of pace from the types of articles I'd done in the past.  This month I'm getting back into the reviewing game; actually, it'll be a quite similar situation to back in November.  I'm writing a review on Shades of Earth, the final novel in Beth Revis's Across the Universe trilogy (another series I started reading when the first book was released two years ago), and I'm going to be in the same boat this time:  the novel comes out tomorrow, and my article is due this Friday, so I'll be pressed for time to get it read and reviewed while keeping up on my schoolwork and the upcoming exams.  Still, I've been a little slacking on the reading front as of late, so it'll be good to back into the literary swing of things.

New year, more CAS

I've been ringing in the new year with a brand-spanking-new CAS activity, and I really think this one is going to be a great personal challenge:  it's called 750 Words.  I read about it -- as I seem to do with everything -- online.  It's an initiative to write 750 words on any topic, once a day, every day, and it comes in the form of 750words.com.  It keeps track of your postings -- you can go back and read any of your previous entries, although they are completely private from the rest of the world -- and it even tells you some pretty neat statistics, both about any given entry, and about all your entries in general.  For example, each day it will analyze your word choice and tell you what were your biggest emotions and concerns were in the text, such as upset, death, relationships, affectionate, money, and so on.  It also tells you the mindset the entry was written in based on four spectra:  introvert/extrovert, positive/negative, certain/uncertain, and thinking/feeling.  It tells you if you primarily wrote about the past/present/future, about sight/touch/hearing, about I/us/you/them; it even lists the words you used most frequently in the entry.

This is my chart from today, showing the words per minute I typed at throughout the entry.  The green dot represents the moment when I reached the daily goal of 750 words, and the green line represents the number of words in the entry at any given point in time.

As you can tell from the above photograph, you get badges added to your page to keep track of your streak.  I am entered in the monthly challenge for January, so I am attempting to keep that streak going throughout the entire month, and then continue it into February.

So, what do I hope to gain from all of this?  I always have loved writing, but I never seem to have the time or occasion to do much of it.  750 words is a really carefully thought out amount; it's not so long as to be like a novel, but it is not something you can just whip off in a few minutes on whatever topic.  You need to make a conscious effort to sit down, set aside twenty to thirty minutes, find a prompt, and just write continuously, and it is so very different from any other writing experience.  In the school newspaper, you're writing to convey information; same with school assignments.  This type of writing can be stories, reflections, journal entries, thoughts... I've actually been quite surprised with what I've written about so far.  Because of the length entailed and the stream-of-consciousness nature of continuous writing, it ends up going in directions I didn't expect, and I'm learning some things about myself and some opinions I hold that I never really noticed before.

I've found that writing every day is not easy.  Since it requires that conscious effort, it's not really something that can just become habit.  You've got to focus and push yourself to do it each day, but I really think this will improve my writing skills, and also help me understand myself and my motivations just a little bit better.

I focus quite a bit in my writing on the sensation of touch more so than sight or hearing; my writing contains a lot of "us" as opposed to "them" or "you" or "I".  I use 31% more conjunctions than the average person.

I can tell that 750 Words is going to be a very rich activity, and while it is definitely a commitment, it is one that I am prepared to make.