Presidential Campaign (October 2017 - December 2017) (30+ Hrs)
Easily the highlight of my school year. My English teacher challenged me to represent the National party for a presidential campaign activity that would lead to a presidential debate. The National party being the most criticized based on it's (potentially) racist and crude views, it was quite the task to convince people that our party wasn't a villain in disguise.
4 students from Sixth Form got assigned a party each. Myself (National) , Tanel (Conservative), Gülten (Labour), and Ediz (Green).
For a month and a half I went on a journey to do the impossible, which was: not coming last place in the final debate. There was a twist, I didn't have a campaign manager unlike the rest of the candidates, which meant I had to do all the work by myself. From editing photos, editing videos, to talking to the board about advertising my campaign via small stickers stuck on the products ESK sells at the Cafe. It was tedious, and it only got harder as we got closer to the debate.
The debate day arrived and I was nervous from the moment I woke up that Friday. It was one of the most stressful days of school years. I had the debate on my mind each lesson I went to and I couldn't stop thinking about what I needed to say in order to get a decent amount of votes. The day went on and school was over, and it was finally debate time!
3 hours of continuous debating happened in the great hall of our school, with nearly 100 people attending. As for me I was sweating non-stop from the nervousness but it eased as time passed. It was also very tiring since we had to stand up for the whole thing.
But in the end it was a success. I managed to achieve 3rd place (which was surprising for me).
Learning Outcomes:-
LO1 & LO2 Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth, Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process.:
As soon as my teacher offered me to participate in the presidential campaign, I knew I wasn't going to struggle since I have a good background in debating. I'm a MUN participant/enthusiast and I also participated in last years debating competition and came second. But this year was going to be different since it wasn't just a debate. We had to maintain a certain type of persona (which might not fit our personality) to make the debate more enjoyable, as well as stand by controversial ideologies (such as my party, the National party) and use them in our debate. Unfortunately I got the hardest one from the lot and I had to stick with it.
As the campaign went on I realized the amount of charisma the other candidates were able to accumulate, and I had to do something about it. So I decided to use one of the few attractive skills, humor. And I implemented humor as best as I can in my campaign, as well as in the actual debate. I think that's what got me the amount of votes I got.
LO4 Show commitment to, and perseverance in, CAS experiences:
The campaign went on for a nearly two months. Two months of planning, researching and executing. It was a tedious journey but it was surely something I'm very proud of since I found myself committing to these tasks with full motivation. I was striving to achieve something from this activity which was to be able to find the ability to enhance my skills in anything I wanted to, and this came as a big test.
LO6 Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance:
Since this was a presidential debate, we were obliged to talk about problems of global significance, ranging from sexism to racism and child abortion. For three hours we covered numerous topics to do with society's endless problems and dilemmas. This was not only beneficial to us as candidates (as we had to do the research on the topics) but also helped raise awareness of the audience, and it certainly made the majority of the great hall think and reconsider POVs on these topics.
Chess Tournament (January 2018) (8 Hrs)
In the beginning of the year, I needed to find a passion for something creative to do consistently. Even though Chess is considered as a sport and you can easily argue that there is no creativity since all the moves are limited, however it has proved to me that it can be one of the most beautiful and admirable games out there. I was obsessed in a way, joining multiple online Chess websites and competing with random players from all around the world. I started reading books about tactics and techniques, the great history of chess, etc.
I was thrilled to hear that ESK would be holding a chess tournament in the beginning of January, and I couldn't be more excited.
8th January - Start of the tournament, Mr Hasman announced the rules and declared the tournaments official kick off
15th January - Second round of the tournament (played 2 of my games)
22nd January - Third round of the tournament (played one very long and intense game
29th January - Fourth round of the tournament (played 3 games)
5th February - Fifth round of the tournament (played one game)
12th February - Sixth round of the tournament (played one game)
19th February - Seventh round of the tournament (played two games)
26th February - 8th and final round (played one game)
Unfortunately, I came 4th place in the tournament, even though I was so confident that my passion for the game would help me win it. However it wasn't all about winning. I got to know new students and learn new tactics from mixing with them for a few hours.
Learning outcomes:-
LO1 & LO4 Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth, show commitment to, and perseverance in, CAS experiences:
Debating Society (October 2017- May 2018) (30hrs)
Since I'm very passionate about debating, I decided to join the weekly debating club after school again. It was a smaller than the year before because the six formers that were in it last year have graduated. But we tried to promote it more to get more people to join and we got a decent amount. But this year, I focused more on mentoring the debaters rather than debating myself. I'd direct them and show them the way of debating and give them tips and point out crucial points they should make in their arguments. It was time well spent on a Friday after school since every week had some sort of suspense that lead to very enjoyable debates from the participants.
I will be more than glad to join next years club to continue promoting debating, as it helps raise awareness to global and societal issues in an interesting way while getting to understand different perspectives.
