From the age of 3, I have been dancing. Dance has been a platform for me to express myself. It had been everything to me since I was a kid but growing up, I lost the connection and built a relationship with heavy workloads, examinations, stress and assignments. CAS gave me an opportunity to rebuild that connection in 11th grade. In the first term of grade 11, I decided to start dancing again. I started taking dance classes and learnt new dance forms. I learned various skills throughout 6 months of these classes. By the end of these 6 months, I had a dance show, showcasing my learnings. This showcase helped me overcome my newly built stage fear, I met my long-lost friend – confidence in this journey. We performed 3 dance routines in total. These dance classes were only once a week for 1 hour and 45 minutes. I learned this new dance form called K-pop and did some hip-hop as well.

This CAS experience covered creativity as I learned a new dance form and enhanced my skills even more. I worked on my strengths and weaknesses to achieve better results. Creativity is the only main aspect of CAS here because it allowed me to pursue my own individual interest and work on them relentlessly. It was a stress-relieving experience, a distraction from studying and academic goals. It was a way through which I devised strategies for my own personal growth. I did gain experience in the form of learning outcomes through this experience.

LO1 states that I need to identify my strengths and work on my areas of growth. This was quite evident for me throughout this experience, because I identified my strength being dance and my connection with it although the area of growth being my confidence and my lost skills. Because I hadn’t danced in a while I was not so confident with my skills and performing in front of people, on top of it learning a completely new dance form was challenging. However, as the LO1 states, ‘developing areas of growth’ I did it. I pulled up my socks and started this experience with one thing in mind being, learning something new and working on my weaknesses. 

Throughout this experience, I worked on regaining my confidence. On D-day (performance day), it was a little difficult as the anxiety kicked in pretty hard although I knew my weaknesses and strengths. Keeping both of them in mind I let my weaknesses be and used my strengths to survive the show. Now that I know my strengths and weaknesses, I can work more productively and easily improve myself whenever I make a mistake. It was extremely important for me to know my strengths and weaknesses because it helped me gain many more experiences which brought confidence and positivity leading to me reaching my goals much more smoothly. 

To conclude, I developed a few learner profiles – balanced and risk-takers. For balance, I had to balance my school schedules, exams and deadlines, and other extracurricular activities with these classes and manage my timetable so that I don’t get too exhausted. I became more productive through this experience overall. Risk taker because I had stage fear and had lost my confidence as well, although I did develop both of these weaknesses and overcame them – even performed confidently in the show. The main highlight of this entire experience was the show because despite all the obstacles I was able to perform confidently and was able to complete the entire course successfully. This entire experience brought loads of enjoyment to me, I was able to enjoy every 1 hour 45mins of my week. These classes were like the best 105 mins of my week. This entire experience brought me so much joy and happiness that I can never forget it.