CAS Service

CAS ACTIVITIES: SERVICE

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
-Use my free time to make someone's life better, so that I can see how it is manage my own altruistic project

When I finished planning my CAS "Service" activity for this summer I wasn't feeling very engaged and I was not really looking forward to it; I already had my hands full with other things, but then I thought about how helpful it could be to others and how I would love it if someone decided to do the same for me, so I swallowed my complaints and went forward with it. Here is the summary of the experience:

1st Week: Planning

After a day of thinking about how I could help others I decided that whatever I did, as long as it helped other people it would satisfy me; so I went for something simple: I was studying for my mathematics recuperacao during the summer, so most of the subjects were still "fresh" in my mind, then why not help others who may need this knowledge too (I later realized that this was probably not the best of ideas, since a lot of people would be traveling instead of studying, but it was worth a try)? I started by making posters offering free mathematics lessons (about the topics that I had just studied: everything regarding functions and binomials) and tried to spread them as much as I could; I glued them around my neighborhood, asked for people who work in my building to take copies with them and offer them to whoever needed...

While I waited for someone to call me I started to prepare the living room for classes, since I needed to be prepared for a large group of people, just in case. 

2nd Week: Execution

Four days passed before someone called, and it was really exciting when they did; it was a girl called Nicole from the next building, she was in a situation similar to mine and needed help with functions, so we scheduled 2 hours of classes 3 days a week. Considering that she did not have almost any background knowledge on the subject,  she was quite a fast learner, and we were able to get everything done in two weeks (12 hours of classes). I must admit that it was weird at first, teaching maths to someone I had never seen before, but after the first hour everything was flowing smoothly and we were getting to know each other as I taught her. It was a fascinating experience; seeing how glad she was that I was helping her with something that was very important for her life made all the work be worth it, and as the time passed I knew that I had made a new friend. 

Although I was the teacher, she taught me a lot of valuable stuff too, particularly how determination can change one's life. Nicole has very strict parents that do not allow her to do any extra curricular activities, both for monetary reasons and protectionism. However, she was able to convince them to allow her to have acting classes once a week if she spent the whole year without getting less than a 9.5 (out of 10) in every subject. It's been a year and a half and she has been able to keep her promise through a lot of studying, however, if she gets anything less than that her parents will cut the acting classes; she was desperate because as soon as her vacations end she will be seeing new subjects in maths (functions is the main thing) and she was afraid that she would not get the 9.5 this time. While I felt sorry for her, it was amazing to be able to help her out in this situation. I started to admire her a lot, for all the effort she has put in to the realization of her dream.

End

While I am not giving her classes anymore, I know that Nicole will always be my friend, and that something good actually came out of all my effort. 

Below there's a picture of one of our classes, she had to stay some extra minutes this day so it got pretty dark and we had to get some snacks, which ended pretty quickly

LEARNING OUTCOMES:

- Many people face challenges far greater than my own, the project helped me to see how motivation can make things happen
-By connecting with people I can form links that last forever