2023.10.13

This is my first reflection; therefore, it will probably be the longest as well. I would like to talk about my set goals and plans for how I'm going to achieve them. I will also clear some things up and give the first month's activity overview.

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Goals

As CAS stands for 3 main parts (creativity, activity, and service), I decided to set separate goals for each group of those:

Creativity

One of my daily activities is cooking. I've been doing it for quite a while, creating my own recipes, thinking of different cooking techniques, or learning different formulas to help me create recipes. But one thing that I never actually did was write down my recipes. I've been thinking about it for some time and finally decided that it was a good idea. Therefore, one of my first goals for this semester is to create and write down eight different recipes. Although it's not the last step of my plan, I'm thinking about writing all of them into a separate website, blog, or even book.

Another goal of creative activities concerns nail painting and design. I started doing gel nails about 3 years ago, and it's really great to see my improvements. Although it is pretty hard to measure my improvements without having design photos, I decided that for this semester my goal is to design, paint, and post at least 5 different nail art designs, which would later be put into my nail art portfolio.

Activity

I would consider myself an athlete in a few different fields because I do sports every day, sometimes even a few times a day. I love figure skating, running, gymnastics, tennis, or even going to the gym, and it's one of my first priorities. Although I never actually cleared up my goals because it is just an everyday part of me, I usually measure my achievements by competitions, but this time I decided to set a particular goal for every sport:

- Figure skating: land a double salchow jump.

- Running: run 10km in 60 minutes.

- Gymnastics: learn to do a wall split with my hands raised off the ground.

- Tennis: participate in at least one tournament and get into the top 10 players.

I intend on achieving these goals by the end of this semester.

Service

Finally, as for service activities, I joined the long-term volunteering at the "Lesė" shelter, which I wanted to do a long time ago. Now that I have achieved this position, I would like to 'climb the ladder' and become an experienced volunteer.

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Plans

These are the adjustments or activities that I plan to make or do to achieve the goals I set. (written above)

Creativity

Talking about cooking, I'm planning to create 8 different recipes, which would mainly include sweet or simple recipes. I will write down and post all of those on this blog. My main plan after the 2-year programme is to put all of my recipes together to make a small recipe book.

What concerns nail art, I plan to design and paint 5 different nail art designs. I will also post them with descriptions. Later on, at the end of the two-year CAS programme, I will put them into a nail art portfolio.

Activity

To achieve my four main goals, I will take different actions for each:

- Figure skating: I will practice my jumps off-ice and also start training leg muscles at the gym.

- Running: I'm going to try out a new running routine, containing hill training, long runs, mile runs, and some other different techniques.

- Gymnastics: I will move on to doing splits from a platform, as well as practice doing stretching exercises at home every day.

- Tennis: I'm going to do some more physical cardio activities to improve my footwork, as well as practice playing it competitively with my sister.

Service

Finally, to achieve the experienced volunteer label, I need to volunteer at least 15 times at the shelter and know all of the main information; therefore, I plan to volunteer every weekend and, after the first 5 times, start learning and practicing all of the pharmaceutical details that I'm allowed to (it is mandatory to visit the shelter at least 5 times before starting doing that). After my 20th time at the shelter, I will try to take the experienced volunteer test to achieve my goal.

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1st month (September)

This month I finished and posted 7 entries on this blog, from which 5 were creative activities, 1 sports event and 1 volunteer service narration.

At first it was quite complicated to figure out, how to write and post them, although as I did it more often it became easier. I would say that the most complicated part was trying to write down the recipes as well as nail art design descriptions, because they have different technical parts, that need to be seperated and organised.

Talking about the activities themselves it was fun and natural, as I do most of them every day. Moreover, it helped me join the "Lesė" shelter volunteers, which is a thing that I wanted to do for a long time.

All in all, at first it was a bit complicated to post the blog entries even though the activities were natural for me, but as I'm posting more often it is becoming more regular and simple.