During this CAS experience, I worked with the monsoon musings editorial proofreading team to proofread the works submitted by the people and make sure that they were appropriate and grammatically correct for the event. This event was happening in school, as a part of the lang and lit team’s events. This particular event occurred on 3rd September 2022. The primary reason why I chose to volunteer for this event, is because I am very interested in creative literature and understanding what the writer is trying to say. I thought that I could use my grammar and creative English skills for something more productive, other than just academic work.

LO2 - Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in process

While I am very interested in English literature, I am not the very best at it. It was challenging for me to grammatically proofread the works submitted, especially when the works were so varied in their type and structure. It was challenging because I hadn’t done this kind of proofreading before any time. This was really my first experience with this level of proofreading. I did overcome the challenge, with the help of online grammar forums and a little bit of relearning some old grammar techniques. I realised that sometimes, very you are working with more complex academic work, you tend to forget some of the most basic academic things. This is why I first tried to understand the fundamentals of English grammar and then work on proofreading. I feel really good after completing this new challenge that I faced. It’s like entering into a new and unknown territory, however, once you get going, you aren’t scared of it all. I feel that it is important for me to do these challenges, as it pushes my limits and therefore make me more capable and resilient in the future. In the process, I learned a new skill of English grammar, which is very useful for me in the future as it really helps with professional communications and other academic work. Having this new skill, makes me feel that I can be much more than what I think. Having new skills is really important as it opens up new horizons and opportunities in the future.

LO5 - Demostrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

I worked collaboratively with people whom I hadn’t worked with before. Usually, I work solo, however, this time was a much-needed change, which allowed me to open up to new people more effectively. Working solo, allows me to have complete control over the task I am doing, therefore I would work in the direction that I want to go. In groups, however, this is not possible, as people have different visions of the task. Therefore, the task doesn’t really go anywhere in that regard. However, in this case, everyone had to just proofread and delegate if they couldn’t do it or were unsure of it. This means that everyone had a vision of what to do and which is why this time working with new people was quite easy. Luckily this time around, I didn’t have to work with someone difficult. Through this, I realised the importance of working together with a team, as it allows you to share new knowledge, while at the same time, learning new techniques and softer things. I think that this would have been only possible if it was done in a team. This is because there were more than 40 entries, which if only one person would have to go through them, would mean that there would be more inaccuracies and less consistency between checking. Moreover, there would just be a lot of load on the person working.

Throughout this entire experience, I have grown to be more communicative. Since I had to work with a team and make sure that everyone was up to date, with all the pieces that I and others have checked, it was essential for me to communicate with people about the same. This CAS experience can be connected with the IB language and literature. IB language and literature deal with understanding the connections in the text, and this experience gave me the opportunity to do just the same. The best part of this experience was when the works I checked were being presented at the event. It was exciting to hear what I had checked, loud and clear! Before this event, I had some interest in English literature. However now I think that English can be just as interesting as maths or science. My perspective on the “boringness” of literature has changed. In the end, I felt accomplished and satisfied with the contributions which I did to the event.