My favourite way to end the day with some exercise is to play table tennis. As growing up, transitioning from pyp to myp to dp, I have noticed that I have no time to engage in physical activity. My religious place introduced a table tennis camp and tournament for 2-3 months. However, for a long time, I had become disconnected from the field as I was caught up in a never ending stream of assignments and examinations. I decided to sign up for this opportunity to ensure a balance between extracurricular activities and academics. Throughout the process, there were a plethora of things I learned and things I could improve on.  

I developed several skills along the process, such as self-management. To lead a healthy lifestyle, it is imperative for each person to engage in activities other than curriculum and so to manage and balance their time. I utilized my time well so that I can meet my intellectual, social, and physical needs.

While accomplishing the CAS experience, I exhibited the following learning outcomes: 

LO1:  Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth:

This experience inspired me to work towards my fitness objectives and return to the level of fitness I had previous to the introduction of physical education in my school.  It also assisted me in recognising some of my physical shortcomings, which I can now plan for and address.Everyone should be aware of their fitness- and health-related strengths and weaknesses so they may work on them and get fit. The only way to improve in a sport is to learn from your errors while you train.  

Similar to this, throughout my training session, self-analysis and criticism from my teammates assisted me in determining my game’s strengths and the areas I need to improve. Like the judgmental, critical, and self-reflective person I am, I strive to evaluate both the positive aspects of my activities and the areas that could use some improvement. The more dedicated you are to an activity, the more you will learn from it, according to psychological theories, thus practicing it every day assures that you learn from others and receive praise for the things you accomplish every day.

Many of my friends have complimented me on my table tennis skills and pointed out that the strategies I employ to score points make me a better player. The fact that I could move around while playing, as opposed to simply standing there and moving my hands to strike the ball, was one of my weaknesses, though. To me, it’s really essential to take lessons from my blunders. My parents always emphasized the idea of learning from mistakes as far back as I can recall. Knowing what I’m good at now, I work to hone it and make it my strongest skill.

Parallel to how my friends play, my weaknesses enable me to study their strategies and learn from them so that I may at least try to improve in those areas. I worked so hard to improve my weakness because I knew I wanted to play a very competitive game. I kept telling my coach to start pushing me to do things that I wouldn’t normally do. Like I indicated above, I continually practised creating movements, shooting on the ends of the table to make it harder for the opponent to hit the ball back, back hand technique, and a whole bunch of tricks, and I feel like I did decent at it.

LO2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills:

In general, I should have been able to manage my schedule and spare time to play table tennis, but I was unable to do so due to my school schedule and few extracurricular activities. It was difficult because it’s important to practise subjects after school. I created a calendar or timetable to help me get through this obstacle, and I adhered to it religiously. Another difficulty was maintaining motivation.

 I often put off going to class and did not want to, but I made every effort to persuade myself to go anyway. I gained some skills from the challenges’ process. First, I developed self-management abilities, which enabled me to balance my extracurricular activities and academic obligations. I also showed thinking skills as I considered my difficulties and came up with solutions. All of these characteristics and abilities will help me develop into a better person in the future and show them off to their fullest potential in order to blend in and establish an impressive identity for myself.

LO4: Show perseverance and commitment in CAS experience. 

Every activity, no matter how minor or big. To have a good outcome, you need to put 100% of your effort into it.

In order to attain my objective of being a good player among all of my competitive friends, I had to be dedicated to this experience. As commitment was the key to accomplishing this objective, I was constantly adamant about overcoming procrastination, poor timing, hand and muscular discomfort, and social criticism.

I was able to keep going because of my perseverance and internal desire, and in the end, I achieved the goals I set for myself. It produced a positive example of self-improvement and wise decisions for a better past, present, and future. I was aware that I needed to practise consistently and with commitment if I wanted to compete at my highest level during the competition. Consistency is one of the most challenging but crucial aspects of sports training. For me commitment is one of the most difficult tasks amongst the rest. It took a lot of efforts to push myself every alternate day to go down and get in the court. And just this attitude of being committed helped me play till semi-finals which I am very proud about today. So as to prove that I was consistent for 2 months I have tried to inculcate as many photos as possible along with minor evidences (such as timetable) and a supervisor form.

LO5 – Demonstrate skills and benefits of working collaboratively

I always love to work with different kinds of people around me as their behavior, skills, inspire me to learn something new from them and apply it in my life. I love to converse with different types of people and throughout the course of learning and playing table tennis I interacted with a lot of people. Though as table tennis is more of like an individual sport it does require working collaboratively with every individual to concentrate on the ball and collaboratively hit it. Table tennis is also played in groups or doubles and this where this LO is very applicable. Understanding and analyzing everyone’s strength and weakness helps us score a point and in team games helps us know how to cover up that individual’s weakness. In conclusion, the following areas demonstrated working collaboratively and it’s impact:

–> Sometimes while playing doubles, I tried to gain knowledge on my partners strengths and limitations so as to get an exposure on how to score point. The benefit of this was that not only I had to analyse on how I play but also working collaboratively with others as a team and learn from them.

–> A lot of students took part in this activity, and sometimes it became too tedious because we were getting less chances. So all of us sat together to make a time schedule so as to ensure equal chances for all players to play. We had to work together and respect everyone’s ideas and tricks and learn from each other to make the 2 months most furitful. This inculcated patience and perseverance in me.

LO7 – Recognise and consider the ethics of choices and actions

Though some of my friends were not very clear with the rules and regulations sometimes when the coaches were not present, I ensured to be loyal and did not cheat during matches. Sometimes I did feel like cheating and argued on the point that I won the match even though I was not behind. I am proud I never did that, I kept ethics in mind and made sure to follow all the values that I have been brought up with.In addition, my coach instilled in me the value of always showing respect for the game, the referee, and the court. Notwithstanding the playing attitude of the players on the opposite team, I was always taught to play ethically, and I brought that lesson with me to this camp as well. I played ethically, made the decision to respond politely, and respected the game.

To encapsulate, this experience overall was very worthwhile to spare time for.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxEUOl2rTyE[/embedyt]