[Pre-180] The IB Education that Encouraged Me to Dream

Studying International Baccalaureate Diploma at St Joseph's Institution (SJI) Senior School is no easy feat. First of all, as a student who is more proficient in Chinese, it took time for me to gradually start loving English and eventually speak English on a daily basis.

Next, there are a variety of new modules such as Theory of Knowledge (TOK), which (for simplicity) is somewhat akin to Philosophy and the Extended Essay (EE), where students need to write a 4000 word mini thesis that is related to one of their subjects--for me, Economics. On top of all these rigorous modules is the CAS (Creativity, Action and Service) programme, where students need to participate in activities that encompasses Creativity, Action and Service, which is a little like our conventional CCAs, except that we have multiple CAS activities that ranges from Korea Cultural Club, Japanese Cultural Club, Personal Protection, Hip Hop Dancing, Volunteering at Hospitals, Participating in School Singing Competitions and more. We had to learn many different skills from a very diverse range of activities--all within 2 years. 

While participating in these activities can be sometimes challenging, it had given me a different perspective in life. It had encouraged me to be more willing to partake in activities that I am not familiar with, and to discover more about different cultures around the world. For instance, during my IB days, I was encouraged to try out popping and locking in my hip hop dance classes. In addition, my CAS activities had also allowed me to learn more about Korean food culture through and Japan anime through our Korean and Japanese club respectively. More importantly, these CAS activities had also given me a glimpse of the array of interesting cultures, places and people around the world, which prompted me to want to know more about anything and everything around the world. It had also, prompted me to really execute the things that I had once dreamed of.

That was the IB education that prompted this project :)