Final Reflective Essay

Being involved in the various CAS/L activities has given me the confidence to try new things. The scope of what I have participated in just this school year amazes me. I have participated in building a bridge in rural Kenya. I have extended my comfort zone; I ran my very first competitive track meet and acted in my first play! A year ago, I never would have thought I had the courage or mental stamina to complete these things. I was filled with such euphoria during and after these two events that I plan to pursue both drama and track and field in college. My skill set continues to grow as I continue to cook, run, direct, and lead clubs. I’ve learned how to effectively manage a group. How to substitute eggs with flax seed. How to keep my knees up and my torso straight. I’ve learned that things do not always work out the first time, and that if you can handle the stress when something seems especially scary (“Oh my goodness, we have a week until this show opens and we still can’t get the cues right”), everything else will seem easy.

I also saw how working towards a seemingly impossible goal, like building a bridge across a river in two days, can be successfully completed with team work. In fact, so many of my activities this year could only have been accomplished through proper communication and appreciation of team members. The ISSEA tournament introduced me to the pressure of an international event, and we, as the staff, had to use each other’s strengths to create a working tournament. Students for the Environment only works as a club if we all share the work and participate in the rewards of our work. The times we are most successful are when we can come together and be active, like when we care for the trees in the nursery together. The projects we are undertaking, like the recycling and restructuring of the environmental policy, can make a difference in the ISK community as a whole and I am proud to be a part of such a benevolent change.

The last big lesson learned from my CAS/L activities is the power of tenacity. Even when copious corporate sponsors had refused to support the Friends of Marich initiative, we kept calling. And eventually, we found enough, and we made a difference. I watched the kids who trained the hardest in Track practice go on to succeed at meets and events. They never gave up. As William Bradley said, “A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success.”

I hope that the activities from this year will become greater parts of my life as I continue forward, past graduation, into the real world.

ICS Track Meet

Over Spring Break, I traveled with a small component of the ISK Track and Field team to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to compete in a meet at the International Community School (ICS). The odds were against us; it was a higher altitude, the air was dry, the sun was scorching, and we only had 6 athletes, where other teams had over 50.

It was a big moment for me. I have been training for months to lower my personal bests in the 1500- and 3000-meter races. You have never experienced true euphoria until you’ve run so hard and for so long that your lungs and your mind are on fire. Every breath burns through your esophagus in a mad rush to reach your lactate-infused muscles. And yet, as with all stark contrasts, the temporary pain you feel, no matter how extreme, just serves to highlight your success. It is the perennial victory of mind over matter. It is the reason that you can become so addicted to exercise. Your success is tangible; it sears the edges of your willpower. That’s why I never quit running, even when I’ve lost a race or I’ve had homework that keeps me awake until 2 am. It becomes a simple input-output function. The more you train, the better your results. I always wanted to push those results higher.

The Addis meet was the perfect opportunity to do just that. It was my first track meet. I was the only Varsity girl on the ISK traveling team, so I had to represent the entire category on my own.
My nervousness was an electric current coursing through my body. I thought I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t worth the stress. My subconscious began presenting excuses, ways to get out of the meet. Perhaps I felt a slight strain in my calf? I shouldn’t exacerbate it by racing. Was that the first sign of a cold in my lungs? It can’t be good to run while sick.

But when they called me for the race, I forced my resolve into an iron mold and held it steady. To my surprise, it went amazingly. I beat my best time by more than 15 seconds, and snagged a second place ribbon. This was replicated almost exactly in my next race. An unexpected victory came along with this: while collapsed, exhausted in the cool down tent, I met the girl who had beat me twice in a row. We uncovered a connection of sweat and hardwork and sportsmanship. This connection grew into a friendship that I value greatly.

Before the races, I had merely hoped I’d cross the finish line. When I was out there, with the track under my feet, I wanted to win. I discovered my full potential, physically and mentally, and an ambition that I hope I never lose.

Oh, and we traveled with a fantastic group! There is nothing like standing in late-night airport security lines and sharing meals of undercooked pasta to catalyze an undying bond between weary athletes. So, I came home with 2 second place honors and a group of fresh friends.

We sang this song every bus ride. I hope it gets stuck in your head. It’s been stuck in mine for days.

Here’s to many more meets and personal successes!

Students for the Environment!

Students for the Environment (SFE) has had a great semester so far! We have begun several conservation-oriented projects that we hope will help incorporate a general sense of environmental activism in the ISK community.

Since the beginning of the year, we have collected paper weekly from all high school classrooms and administrative buildings to be recycled by the local corporation Chandaria. Every week, kilograms of paper are weighed and deposited in the recycling bins in the high school parking lot. The next step is to create a partnership with the elementary and middle school environmental clubs so that all discarded paper on the ISK campus can be properly collected and recycled.

A small committee of SFE members is also working to create a new, comprehensive environmental policy that will be proposed to the Board and hopefully instated as early as next school year. The policy draft focuses specifically on methodology to cut down school water usage, protect important tree species on campus, reform bus routes, and create a carpool network for students living in the same area. We are optimistic that the fruits of this project will endure for many years if the policy is adopted by the administration.

We are also excited to announce the opening of the school’s first tree nursery, which is located near the high school parking lot, behind the library. With amazing guidance from Ms. Scilla Davey, we chose ten tree species that are indigenous to Kenya, easy to grow, and quite beautiful. These are the Podo, Nandi Flame, Terminalia brownii,
Newtonia,
Neem,
Elgon Olive, Caster Oil Tree,
Potato Tree,
Bamba Coffee, and Olea Africana.
Throughout the year, SFE members will maintain the nursery, which opened on Friday, March 9th with 20 Podo and Nandi Flame seedlings. Soon, we will be able to start showing off our nursery to potential buyers. Trees from the nursery will be used to supplement our own future large-scale tree planting projects as well as planted in gardens by independent customers.

It’s going to be a productive, eco-friendly semester!

ISSEA Championship

From Wednesday afternoon to late Saturday night, I have been trapped in Mr. Quinet’s office working on the website uploads for the ISSEA tournament pictures, scores, and standings. Basketball has always been a favorite sport of mine to watch, so I was thrilled to be able to help out with the biggest high school tournament in Africa, even if it meant hours of tedious work. Over the past four days, I have watched more basketball than I ever had in all my previous years combined. I’ve been caught in the tumultuous river of emotions accompanying such an event; swept up in the cheering, the crying, the celebrating, the eating, and the screaming.

The ISSEA staff had to work together closely so that all the operations would run smoothly. The other schools were counting on us to provide a well-run tournament. Communication was key. We set up a system of shifts of different Photography Club members assigned to different games, and once they got six perfect shots, they would report to me. All the pictures went onto this website after being modified and resized:

http://www.isk.ac.ke/page.cfm?p=421

It was a difficult job for all of us. Through the hours of tireless working, we would bring each other snacks, words of encouragement, instructions, and results from various games. We depended on each other.

I had never worked with HTML coding before. I appreciated the introduction to how websites worked. I hope I can develop it further, as website creation is an important facet of most modern-day business structures.

I also learned about the inner-workings of basketball. I had had vague ideas before about the rules (mostly me asking things like “Wait, you can’t run with the ball, right?”), but never before had I witnessed the depth of the spirit, hard work, and dedication that each player contributes to make a team work as a whole. It’s a delicate formula. The fans have to be cheering just right, the coaches have to be advising perfectly, every player has to communicate with every other player. And at the end of the game, both sides have to reconcile their victory or loss and practice good sportsmanship. I think we all have a lot to learn from basketball.