CAS Journey – Challenges and Opportunities

CAS Journey – Challenges and Opportunities

Describe your selected CAS experience or project.
During summer break 2021, I got the opportunity to participate and perform at the music festival “Strawberry Man”. I went through a few stages of preparation, including selecting and learning the song; practicing; rehearsing with the band; staging; and eventually, performing. This whole process was beyond meaningful for me as I always enjoy being on the stage. This CAS experience lasted for around 2 months.

Describe your successes and challenges within this experience or project.
One of the many challenges I faced was, because the actual performance was only a few days after my quarantine, the band and I had limited rehearsal time. It was also my first time collaborating with this band, so we struggled to coordinate in our first rehearsal. Another challenge was the song selection because, not only did we have to consider my musical preferences but also the audience’s. It was quite difficult for us to finally pick 2 songs from the “hundreds” we initially considered. However, this was also our greatest success. The audience was able to sing along with both the songs, keeping a great atmosphere throughout our set.

Describe how you met one of your selected learning outcomes within this experience or project.
One of the learning outcomes I chose for this CAS experience was “Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process”. To overcome the challenge mentioned above, the band and I were committed to rehearsal everyday before the performance, making good use of the limited time we had. Even though we struggled at first, we quickly adapted to each other and were able to work together well in the end. Through this process, I developed new skills, such as a better breathing method. This was also my first time performing in front of such a large audience, gaining me a remarkable experience.