Andrew's CAS

I have recently joined the school's golf team and have really enjoyed this experience so far. My past experience with this sport has been on and off, and my dad is big fan. While through my past experience I learned how to how to hold the club properly and the basic movement that should occur, I have found difficulty in the exact steps that need to happen for the best swing. I have begun working on my swing on the driving range and have found the ball going a bit further each time as I grow more comfortable to the tips and instruction by Mr. Roddy. The first step was working with shifting my weight and properly lifting the club back. This took a while to incorporate, but within the first few shots I have found improvement with both range and consistency. I have also been learning proper etiquette and rules for playing on the course which has been a great experience playing the holes at Herman Park. Carrying my bag is a bit tiresome, but I am grateful that the weather is still fairl...

I have just finished the working as the chair for the ECOFIN committee for the middle school MMUN conference in New York.  It was a great experience working with the other members of my bureau, my vice-chair and rapporteur, to carry out the rules of procedure during the conference and aid the students in creating resolutions for the topics. I am still amazed by the ability of these students to work together on these issues regarding Women's Development and Sustainable Energy in the world. Each person is participating with the intention of creating a viable solution for these topics and this conversation brought me back to my own time in this debate. One particular situation occurred during this conference where I had to consider what action take as one of the students in room simply left without prior permission. The area that the conference takes place in is also publicly accessible, which makes an unsupervised student with unknown whereabouts an issue especially with the youn...

Its peak college essay season and I still have few to finish up before the New Year begins, but I have just received the position papers for my committee to review. I always look forward to seeing some of these ideas and getting hyped for the actual conference in the next few months. This year I am little more independent with these papers than last time, as it is my decision to decide and notify the schools and students who need to add either information or formatting (only major exclusions). Deciding whether to send a paper back or not is based on whether they fulfill the standard requirements. However, this decision is largely centered around debating whether, from the information given by the paper, will the student have a productive time at the conference. While sending a paper back is in my eyes the best thing for the student, I know from helping with the students at my school prepare that what is on the page is not necessarily representative of their knowledge. This is at times ...

I have been playing a little more than usual in the past few weeks and have been growing more competitive against my brother. It is fun being able to beat him as well as seeing my improvement over the last few months on my swing and ball control. I have begun playing with some of my friends at a local club and while I do not see myself playing competitively, I am still having fun improving my skill and playing.

I have started using a ball machine to uniformly toss balls at me to practice my swing. This has been useful in just practicing one after the other. It has also been interesting to be able to manipulate each individual shot on the machine itself and has given me a better understanding of the variables and characteristics the ball can have. I have been able to improve my serve over this time and am able to get the ball into the box most of the time. Now just to make the serve a little faster.

In the months leading up to MMUN conference, I help students learn about the United Nations and the program as well as prepare the needed materials. I do this with one of my friends and we both aid the teacher coordinators. While I enjoy being able to share my own personal knowledge with those who have yet to experience the program or would like some help, I have found this mentoring to be beneficial for both myself and the students as I am also learning better ways to communicate with students and teach certain concepts.

Working off the aerial inspiration from before, I tried to utilize and practice the techniques I learned in photography club to capture photos of the colorful sunset and the clouds. I found framing to be an important aspect as the positioning of the horizon had a large impact on the composition of the photo. This is due to the sky above the horizon featuring a largely blank and bare surface, while below it is complex with clouds and the ground below. Balancing this simplicity and complexity was interesting as I experimented with the utilization of negative space.