Journal 9.12

I skipped a few classes this week because of a lot of school work. However, the other classes this week were really productive. I finally touched my toes with my forehead in the butterfly posture. I tried so hard to do that last week, and couldn't. So, that achievement made me proud of myself. I also stood longer in the vrikshasana posture because of more focus and balance.

Journal 5.10 : More plants and plans...

The Boston fern is healthy without any brown or yellow leaves. Also, few more people joined the Eco club this month. We now have a big team! In the meeting held this month, we came up with ideas of installing plants in the dining hall and also creating a plant aquarium! We discussed the pros and cons of the ideas and ended up deciding that both the ideas would work. So as per the tradition, we split into groups and started making proposals to give to the management. We also bought a few more aloe vera plants and jate plants this month to replace the few that died. Before leaving school for the winter break, we took all our plants to the parking lot at our school so that the gardener who comes to school every day could water our plants too.

Journal 9.11

Knowing how each posture in yoga is beneficial for the body makes you do the posture as perfectly as you can. That's what my teacher does. He never forgets to tell me how each pose can be beneficial. Some are for the stretch of the lower back, some are for the stretch in the thighs and the others would be a muscle stretch in different regions of the body. Most importantly, each pose should be followed by a counter pose. For example, if we perform a posture that involves the bending the back backwards, we must perform another one which makes you bend your back forward. We didn't learn anything new this week.

Reflection : Ideathon!

             This was one of the best CAS experiences this year. We participated in this competition called the ‘Ideathon’ where we were given a task to pick up any global problem that a mass amount of people face which could be related to either Science, Technology or Business and come up with a solutions for it. We had to split up into teams of 4 or 5. Unfortunately, I got the chicken pox and couldn’t go to school for a week and hence couldn’t join any team or prepare for the competition. But the day I recovered and went to school was the day of the competition. The best part was that my coordinator let me join one of the teams in which one person was absent. I was excited and all set to go even though I had no idea what my team had planned to present.

            They explained their ideas to me the entire bus ride to the venue of the competition, from our school. It was about how we could make water consumption efficient when there is a high level of water scarcity. We rephrased our solutions and also added a few more, before we reached. Our solutions included using small gates in the water pipes which will close when the level of maximum water usage is reached by every house or building and connecting this mechanism to an app which can prompt the user. Another solution was that trees can be planted in 20% of every construction area instead of using all of the land for the building. 

          Since the competition began very late, each team got only half the time that was promised to be given. Hence, we could only present some of what we had prepared for. I have to confess, I could feel  the fear run down my spine a million times every second from the time we walked on to the stage till we finished our presentation. We didn’t qualify to the next round probably because our PPT wasn’t up to the mark or because we didn’t do a good job in putting forward our solutions. However, as we the CASians always say, It’s not the destination that matters, it’s only the journey that does. Having said that, the experience of this activity which happened in very short span of time especially for me, was amazing and worth the time. We learnt a lot about other problems and saw many different kinds of people out there who had different skills sets and a lot creative ideas. The exposure and the knowledge we gained from this activity was extraordinary.