Introduction to CAS

One of the aspects of the International Baccalaureate Program that appealed to me was the CAS program. I have always enjoyed facing new challenges, and I have often found myself creating challenges where I could not find any, to make life more interesting and rewarding. I have truly enjoyed these past 2 years in the IB, because I know that I have developed both mentally and physically through the CAS program.

In the course of the past 2 years, I have begun doing activities that I did not expect to have done while attending high school. I had thought about tutoring before, because I really enjoy working with children, however I had never tutored until last year. I did not think that I would do yoga, and today it is one of the most fulfilling activities of my weekly routine. As for snowboarding, thanks to it I discovered a courage within myself that I did not know existed when it came to sports.

I truly believe that CAS is an enriching program that completes the IB in terms of making students become more aware of their surroundings and help take part in raising awareness in their communities. As a member of the International Chain of Awareness, I participated in the conference, and played an active part in the running of a fundraiser concert at our school.

I believe that after graduation, I will be entering college equipped with the skills necessary to be on my own in an entirely new world, and CAS was instrumental in preparing me for the next step forward.

Snowboarding

My only attempt at doing an extreme-sport, snowboarding was an activity that I did not think I would be good at. I have a slight fear of heights, and although the idea of snowboarding was always tempting, I had not attempted to try it until the winter of my senior year. My best friend and I went to Kartalkaya, where we took 6 snowboarding lessons and attempted to snowboard by ourselves in between our lessons. It was exhilarating! I loved the mountain, and I loved snowboarding. It was exciting to do something in a field I that was completely out of my comfort zone.
I went snowboarding 3 weeks after those lessons. I snowboarded by myself for the weekend, and with the help of a more experienced friend, I managed to snowboard on the steepest hills. I felt really brave, and I’m glad to have started snowboarding.

Fitness

At the beginning of IB, I had a very difficult time balancing my fitness schedule and schoolwork. I went twice a week in October, and I attended the Beginners Cycling classes every tuesday. It was exhausting, but it also felt really good to work out. I also worked out with small weights to get my body accustomed to doing sports.
Overall, I completed my full work-out program 10 times (Cross-trainer, Bike, Weights), took 5 cycling classes. I also occasionally ran on the treadmill when I was feeling too tired to do the program. Near the end of the year, I combined my work-out schedule with swimming (as I’ve mentioned on the previous page). I took a break in the summer.
I started coming to the gym again in August to balance out the extra work I had taken on (because I was preparing for the Turkish University Entrance Exam). I swam a couple of times, then came to the gym every day for 2 weeks before school started. I could not go for the following 3 months, but I began again after November, going at least twice a month.
I changed my schedule to a more advanced one in December, and even though I have not been able to go regularly, I will do so after the IB exams.

I believe that going to the fitness center was necessary in order to have a balance in my life, since the majority of my extracurricular work does not involve physical activity. To that end, I really enjoyed working out, meeting new people and trying to improve my athletic side.

Swimming

I used to swim regularly when I was in primary school, because it helped me win my battle with asthma. I had stopped swimming until May 2008, with the exception of recreational swimming on holidays. In May, I spoke with my trainer at the gym, and he told me that one of the best ways to increase my muscle strength was by swimming, and that I should swim. So I began to swim 2 hours every week with my trainer for 6 weeks, and he showed me how to improve my strokes and how to swim without tiring myself too quickly. It was a difficult 6 weeks, because I do not have a very good physical discipline. My trainer motivated me to come at the scheduled hours, and thanks to him I improved greatly at swimming consecutive laps. I also feel that my respiratory system is stronger, since I would not be able swim more than 4 laps without having to stop to breathe for 5 minutes before. Now, I can swim 10 laps without having to rest for more than 2 minutes.
I did not continue swimming in my senior year, however I plan to start again after my IB finals since I will have a chance to swim everyday without worrying about classwork.

Philosophy Club

I began to attend philosophy club workshops in the fall of 2007. We discussed various issues such as ethics and existence in several meetings after school for two months. Then, we began to meet once every week to arrange the first Enka Philosophy day. I was present in the workshops we had after school, and in the end I was given parts from Goethe’s Faust to read in between the speeches of the other participants.
We had Professor Saffet Murat Tura, a famous psychologist who also has works in the philosophy field, come to our school for a panel. We asked him questions about existence and ethical values. He had some interesting insight on how the value given to people evolved over time, especially between the Industrial Age and the beginning of the 21st century.
About two weeks before the presentation, we had some strong arguments about the language of the presentation. Some participants believed that the higher mode of address of philosophy should be kept, while others argued that the presentation was being made to high school students and should therefore be understandable. I thought that the argument itself was a topic for the philosophy day, since it was debatable and both sides had valid points. In the end though, the students who wanted to keep the complex language of their speeches did so, while others made their speeches a bit simpler.
In January, we had the first Enka Philosophy day and it was great! We received some positive feedback regarding how we had combined acting and philosophy by adding incorporating Faust into the presentation.
In April, we attended the 2nd Annual Ethics Forum at Yüzyılışıl High School. In my committee, we discussed the ethics of interfering with the genetics of a fetus to create a baby that fits the view of society, with special focus on gender identity and sexual orientation. In the end, I was chosen to be the Most Adept Speaker, and was also selected to explain our committee’s conclusion in the closing ceremony.

Even though I could not contribute to the Philosophy Club’s activities in my senior year, I learned many things through discussions with my peers and speeches that we’ve heard during various workshops. I believe that the Philosophy Club broadened my understanding of people, norms and culture. I hope to take some philosophy lessons when I go to college.

Yoga

Even though I have written this in a report format so far, I would like to copy here what I wrote about yoga when I first started doing it:

After discussing it with Mrs. Tombaz, I decided to start doing yoga. I met our instructor, Neslihan İskit today. She seems like a really positive person. The poses and the motions were difficult at first, but she told us that once we managed to breathe correctly, we would move much more easily. Sure enough, once I got the hang of the special kind of breathing Yoga requires, the rest of the session passed more comfortably. We meditated at the end of the session, and I must say it was an amazing experience. I am really glad I chose to do Yoga. I can’t wait for next week!

For me, Yoga has been one of the most significant activities I have ever done. It has pushed my mental and physical boundaries, and broadened perception of myself and the world around me. It provided an outlet for pent up stress, and I enjoyed not thinking about anything for 2 hours every week. It is the single activity which I missed only 5 times over the course of the past 2 years, and I tried to make up for those sessions by attempting to meditate and do the basic Tada Sana (Hailing the Sun) movements at home.
There were days when my entire body ached because of some of the exercises, but the following week I could reach farther, bend more, and do everything easier than the previous week. I felt rejuvenated, energetic after every session, and I loved that!
I plan on continuing Yoga for the rest of my life.

Tutoring

I began tutoring a 6th grader in October 2007, because he was falling behind on his English lessons. For our first lesson, I tried to get to know him better and asked him to explain his interests to me in english. He was a bit shy, so I talked about computer games (which he had mentioned he liked) to make him feel more comfortable. Then, we went to the library where I asked him to pick a book in english that he would like to read in our lessons. He picked one, and I asked him to read a couple of pages until the other week so that we could discuss it.
The second week, he told me that he had not read the book, and I told him that we could read it during the lesson. I tried my best to relate to him, even though I loved reading books when I was his age I reminded myself that people can be different. I did not want to become an annoying teacher, so I made jokes to him and we laughed while we read the book. I asked him if he wanted to read for next week, and he said that he would like that.
The third week, he told me that he had not read again, and that he had some english homework he was having trouble with. We went through the homework while he promised me that he was going to read for the next week.

International Chain of Awareness

I had joined the ICA a year before entering the IB program, and I was a member of it from outside the club, since my club times were devoted to MUN. In March 2008, I acted as the Committee Supervisor of the Gender Inequality Committee, which I had chaired a year before. We started the first day with ice-breakers, during which everyone in the committee warmed up to each other. I then explained how we had worked in the previous year, the actions that we had taken to raise awareness on the issue of gender inequality and women’s education. For the 3 days of the conference, I mostly acted as an observer who made regular reports to the organizing team on the committee’s progress, and also guided the committee members when they were debating and drawing up their action plan. They built on ideas that we had formed the previous year, and I discovered that there were aspects to the issues that we had not discussed earlier. I can say that even though I was there to teach the procedures and supervise, I learned a lot from the committee.
On the evening of the second day of the conference, we had a fundraiser concert, also under the umbrella of ICA. I was in the organizational team of the concert, and for me it was a completely new experience to help run a concert. I ran quite a lot that night, carrying items around, helping the school staff and making sure the concert ran smoothly.
Overall, I feel that I helped the world in a small way by raising awareness and by helping my friends raise awareness on issues that we need to overcome as a global community.

Model United Nations

I have been a member of the Model United Nations Club of my school for the past 4 years. The experiences, the people I have met from all around the world and the countless hours of research combined, MUN has been the most inspirational club I have ever been a part of. Today, I am seriously considering a career in the United Nations, and I will be majoring in Political Science when I start college in the fall of 2009.
While I have been in MUN every year in high school, I will mention the experiences from the last two years, during which I was in the IB program.
The beginning of the 2007-2008 academic year was exciting, because we had about 40 new students join the club and it was our responsibility as experienced delegates to train them. The first 2 weeks of club, we worked with the newcomers. Our main task was to get them acquainted with the concepts of United Nations, country policies and resolutions. Afterwards, we began to finalize our preparations for the DSAMUN conference in Athens, which took place in October. I was the Advocate of France in the International Court of Justice. I made the error of confusing the Democratic Republic of Congo and Republic of Congo, and prepared for the wrong case. For the first time in my MUN career, I lost. Still, I cherish the memory of that conference because I got a taste of what being a lawyer would be like, and met many amazing people, most of whom I still correspond with, today.
For the remainder of the first academic term, I was with the newcomers, helping them prepare for mock debates held at school, teaching them how to write, defend and attack resolutions. We also worked on country policies, and making the distinction between our personal ideas on how things should be, and how the country we represent thinks they should be. This was a distinction I also had trouble making, and in the process of working with the new members of the club, I feel that I also gained a better understanding of it.
In April, 2008, we attended the Robert College Model United Nations conference, and I can say without exception that it was the best conference I had ever attended. I was the ambassador of Japan, and I was in the Political Committee. Almost everyone in the committee was very passionate when it came to debates, and it was a thrill to be a part of the discussions. I became the Main Submitter of the resolution on the question of Kosovo, and in spite of the very powerful arguments made by the delegate of Russia and its allies against Kosovo’s independence, our resolution passed. It was then chosen to go to the General Assembly, where it was going to be discussed once again. It passed the General Assembly as well, and at the end of the conference I was chosen to be the Best Delegate of the Political Committee. RCIMUN 08 was an important conference for me because it was there that I truly learned how to work as a team in Model UN, and not be a main submitter who tries to defend the resolution independently. I did my best for have every one who was a co-submitter of the resolution to have their say, and I believe that we worked very well as a team.
The rest of the academic year passed rather quickly, and we held another mock debate in June in order to see how well everyone did. The new delegates that we had worked with were all capable of debating effectively, and overall we as the experienced members felt proud to see how far they had come.
My fourth year in MUN, which was also my last, began the same as the previous two years with us teaching new delegates the rules and procedures of Model United Nations. The first 9 club meetings were devoted entirely to them, and for the first time we were disappointed at the mock debates because the majority of the newcomers did not perform as well as we expected them to perform. We then tried a different method, telling them the topic of the debate and the countries they were assigned 4 weeks before the mock debate. Also, every two inexperienced delegates were assigned one senior member of the club, and we helped them with the research and the writing process. The second mock debate went much better.
I had always wanted for us to host our own MUN conference at Enka, and to that end we began preparations in October. We met during club time and several other times in the week for an hour after classes ended to plan the conference. After three meetings, our examination period began, which forced us to limit the meetings. We met outside of school once, where we discussed everything from the committee rooms, to sponsors for 3 hours, and I had glimpse of what business life was like. We proposed our final plan to our principal, who approved it, but asked for us to move the dates to the end of the year instead of the proposed winter dates. We did, and notified the schools we were planning on inviting that the first ENKA MUN was going to be held in June, with me as the founder and Secretary General of the conference.
It was quite upsetting when Robert College and Üsküdar American Academy, the two main schools we were counting on, contacted us and said that the final examination period was at the same time as our conference date, and therefore they could not attend. Two other schools told us that they were very happy and could attend. We did not hear from the other schools we had invited. Due to the low attendance, we came up with a second list of schools to invite. We had a meeting with our principal again to update him on the situation and ask him to approve the second list. He asked us to postpone the conference to a more suitable date for next year, and after discussing the issue for a while, we agreed. We will be handing in all of our notes, letters and conference plans to the MUN executive team at the end of this year, before we graduate, so that they can host the first ENKA MUN next year.
One of the most interesting experiences I had as an MUNer this year was that, for the first time, I was the Deputy Chair of the Special Conference at TIMUN, in November. It was quite fun, and I really bonded with my Co-Chair and President Chair. I had avoided applying for chairing positions before because I knew that I would be unable to debate, and I believed that I preferred debating. After the conference, in spite of the fact that it was a remarkable experience for me, my belief regarding debating had not changed.
We prepared for a conference in Holland, Haarlem for the following 2 months, and I was going to be the delegate of Uganda in the Peace-building Commission. We also helped delegates do research with us, because our advisor had received several emails from the organizers of Haarlem MUN that students needed to have researched extremely well. When we finally went to Haarlem, however, I was told that Uganda was not in the Peace-building Commission and that I was going to be in the Security Council. I was upset, but I had to accept and I was later surprised to find out that one of the Security Council issues was Kosovo, which I had researched very well last year for RCIMUN. The Security Council experience was not enjoyable, however, because the delegate of China vetoed everything and prevented the resolutions from passing. I still managed to get my points across and also made some friends from Africa, USA, and Holland, which made the trip worth it.
I applied for the chairing position at Robert College MUN, because my friends encouraged me to try, and if I did not get it , then I would be a delegate which would be a great way to finish my high school MUN career. I was assigned President Chair of the Special Conference. I decided to reject the offer, because I had already chaired a Special Conference and I wanted to have a different experience. I chose to be a delegate, realizing that I wanted to live the excitement of debating one last time.
The conference itself was one of the best I’ve ever attended, and I was chosen to be the Main Submitter of the resolution. Our resolution was also sent to the General Assembly where I defended it, and in spite of many speakers who argued against it, it passed. Later on, I was chosen as the Most Active Delegate in my committee. Overall, it was truly the best final conference I could have had, and I am glad that I decided to be a delegate.
At the end of the conference, I had a chance to talk with the CEO of THIMUN, which is a sub-organization of the UN and also the organization that started MUN. I asked her what she would suggest someone who is considering a carreer in the UN should do, and she told me that I should apply for an internship at the UN, and that she would write me a recommendation if I wanted one. That made the whole 4 years I’ve spent doing MUN activities even more rewarding.
My feelings for MUN are difficult to put into words, but I can say that it is one of the things I feel very, very passionate about. I am truly thankful for the 4 wonderful years, and the brilliant people I’ve met from different parts of the world who do care about peace, communication and progress. I am also thankful for the incredible experiences I’ve had at each conference, which I would not trade for anything in the world.