Creativity, Action, Service
Leadership
This year, I took on leadership roles across several activities, as part of the Scholarship Students’ Society, the Service Ambassador team, as well as the Finally Friday team. When taking on greater amounts of responsibility, the normal challenges that I face from day to day, such as time management and organisation, amplify in magnitude. It is one thing to mind your own business, but when you are in charge of a group of people as well, there are many more factors to consider.
As one of the welfare subcommittee members of the Scholarship Students’ Society, I was in charge of working out logistics for the monthly lunches, where we would have guest speakers come in to provide advice, motivation and inspiration to the scholars. Knowing that monthly lunches for over 100 people was riding on my team’s efforts to invite speakers, prepare food and organise the location, the responsibility felt pressuring at times, but at the same time it was a pushing motivation for me to do the best I could for the scholarship community. Through this, I also came to realise how much preparation and organisation goes into even the smallest event like a lunch gathering, and I have become more appreciative of others who also take on similar responsibilities.
Having the chance to work with others on the team who take on more roles than me, I also got to observe how they planned and completed their tasks, such as organising the end of year awards ceremony, as well as other activities like the scholar art piece collaboration with the art scholars. In the coming two years, I will possibly be stepping up to take their place, and this year has been a good time to prepare for that.
As part of the Service Ambassador team, I was involved with organising activities such as Walk for Change, Service Fair and Year 10 Service Day over the school year. Since there were quite many events that the team was involved in, we were each took on larger roles in for our own assigned activities, and helped out with smaller responsibilities for the ones that others are in charge of. The team was also responsible for helping the Year 10 and 11 students with their service and action, by keeping them informed of their requirements, as well as teaching them how to fill out activity details and write reflections accordingly. Even though I was mostly familiar with the service and action program after Year 10, there were still times when I found it challenging to help others. Especially when I had to make a presentation guiding the Year 11 students on how to write their exit responses, I had to do my own research and deconstruct it in a way that the other students would understand. From this, I realised that there are times when leaders are unsure of what to do and still have to guide others, but this is normal and even leaders have room to learn and improve.
Being part of the Finally Friday team really tested my ability to persevere and problem solve as a leader. We began planning our yearly event at the beginning of the year, scheduled to take place right before the Christmas holidays. However, there were miscommunications in the team at times and this led to mix ups in the roles that each member took on. The additional time constraint that we were under made it more difficult to get all the planning done, since everyone was busy and had other commitments to attend to, and in the end we had to cancel the event. I felt like I failed the team somehow, since I could not arrange the part of the event that I was assigned in time. In hindsight, I think that I could have been more prepared by getting things organised ahead of time.
Everyone has a different leadership style, and through these activities I was able to discover my own traits as a leader. Since there is no such thing as a format or fixed method for leadership, taking on leadership roles in such activities has helped me to develop my personal style, and this also links back to my growth as a person. I consider myself to be open-minded and approachable as a leader, and I hope that this helps to bring the team closer together regardless of who I am working with. I also find that spending more time leading, organising and working with other people brings me out of my personal bubble and trains me to be more outgoing and extroverted. From these activities, I constantly learned from the others who were leading around me as well, and I hope to gravitate towards their positive leadership traits. I also learned that one person cannot be in charge of everything all the time, and it is more important to know when to lead and when to follow.
Action
Badminton has been a long-term hobby of mine, as regular exercise but also as a form of escape from academics. This year, I was part of the under-16 Black Kites team. Even though each badminton match is played with one or two people on the court at a time, ultimately it is still a team effort in order to win the entire game. It also was not all physical, as there was a tactical battle behind each match, from the arrangement of players down to every movement on the court.
I do not consider myself to be an extremely athletic person, but I still greatly enjoyed being part of a team. The sportsmanship, teamwork and spirit that is shown through every game made it a very unique and enjoyable experience for me, one that cannot be matched in other aspects of life. One thing that amazed me most was the honesty that players upheld during the games, as there was no referee so the players decided on the outcome of the points. It was surprising at first to see players from both sides admitting when they lost the point, even when no one else noticed. After a while though, I understood that this was the spirit of the game, and the fairness made it all the more fun to participate in.
Even though we were not able to win, I am still very thankful to have become such close friends with my teammates. Despite only knowing them for a short amount of time, I feel that we grew very close as a unit and the bond that we shared through this experience is unforgettable. The team spirit that we shared throughout all our games brought everyone close together as we all cheered each other on through our successes and defeats.
Service
I participated in various service activities this year, such as math mentoring club, Year 4 Friday Rotations and Kids4Kids buddy reading. All of them involved interacting with children of numerous age groups, which I have found to be something I enjoy doing. Through these activities, I was able to contribute my skills back to the school and the outer community.
Math mentoring club is an activity that I carried on participating in since last year. The club ran weekly, and as a mentor, I was assigned to help a Year 7 student with any math homework that they struggled with. Since it is the first year of secondary, it was important for me to help my student to set a strong foundation of knowledge. At times, teaching someone else proved more difficult than learning the material myself, since there were differences between the way that I understand concepts and the way that my student does. I worked my way around this obstacle by trying different ways of explaining, such as breaking down the method and drawing out diagrams. Since I was not too experienced with teaching others, there were times when I had to seek help from the student leaders, and this turned out to be a good learning experience for me.
Year 4 Friday Rotations also involved working with students at school, however it was a different experience when compared to math mentoring club. I helped a primary teacher run a story writing activity, assisting her with handing out supplies and handling the children. Working with primary students required a different skill focus, needing a lot more patience rather than teaching ability. It was also challenging to keep the children on task and motivated throughout each session. I needed to keep up the right level of enthusiasm in order to keep up the children’s morale, without them getting too excited and out of control.
I was also part of the Kids4Kids Buddy Reading program for a shorter period of time, where we would go to a nearby local primary school to read to a group of students every week. There were also games and activities that we planned out for the kids to have fun and learn more English. There was a challenge due to the language barrier, since we were encouraged not to speak Cantonese to the children. When they did not know certain words or phrases, I communicated through gestures and pictures so they would understand better. Sometimes, I had trouble putting my foot down and asserting control over the more rebellious kids, but after some practise and with the help of the leaders I was able to improve.
Not only was I able to help and interact with others in the community through my service activities, but I was also able to develop my own skills in the process by learning from other volunteers. I was also able to take away a lot from working with the younger children, through their creativity and imagination.