Arwa's CAS Blog

(C) Taking Violin Lessons (1 hour/week) I've been taking Violin Lessons for about 15 years, and currently, I take them for about an hour every Saturday at The American Music Academy. Specifically, this week, I've been working on practicing the first few measures of a piece called Perpetual Motion , from Suzuki Book 4.  Violin is one of the extracurricular activities that has been a constant in my life since I was younger, so it's definitely allowed for me to express myself in another way. Also, it's something that I enjoy a lot, and I've grown to want to learn even more Violin pieces as I continue with my lessons with my teacher, Mr. Wyatt Coleman.  Learning a new piece is always hard, so this experience has given me a lot of obstacles to overcome throughout the piece. I definitely feel like I’ve been able to overcome some of them, and I’ve definitely been able to grow more as a violinist! Starting to learn this piece has also helped me learn to persevere and stay c...

(S) Designing the Newsletter for The Bayou Village School For awhile now, I've been designing the weekly newsletter for The Bayou Village School since my junior year. It's been one of my favorite things to do at the end of the week, as it's allowed for me to pursue graphic design a little bit more, which is something that I have a little bit of interest in. Also, this volunteering opportunity has allowed for me to learn more skills surrounding time management, as I usually have to work on the newsletter after school, which allows for me to still be active after school on Fridays. It's just something that I look forward to doing at the end of the week, and I hope to continue volunteering at The Bayou Village School even after my high school career. I hope to keep on designing their newsletter when I go to college as well. This position has also allowed for me to work more collaboratively with the school to create their weekly newsletters, as well as learn some new group ...

(C) Learning Farsi during my J-Term  This is similar to my last blog, as I'll mainly be talking about the second week of my Individual J-Term for this year. During the second week, I focused on jump starting on learning Farsi, focusing on it intensively throughout the week. Initially, I thought Farsi would be more similar to Arabic, so this week was definitely a little bit eye opening for me. This is mainly because Farsi and Arabic are a lot more different than I was expecting, so it was a little bit difficult for me initially. However, I feel like I was able to get the grasp of the language quickly, and it was definitely a good experience for me. Throughout the process, there were definitely a lot of challenges, but by overcoming those obstacles I was also able to gain a lot of experience and knowledge in the end! Learning Outcome 2

  (C) Learning Arabic during my J-Term For my Individual J-Term this year, I learned Arabic for the first week. I continued this idea from last year, when I first proposed my A-Term to learn Arabic intensively for 2 weeks.  This was definitely a little bit hard, since Arabic is a hard language to learn, but I definitely enjoyed it a lot. It was a good learning experience for me, especially since I modified the course a little bit from last years Individual A-Term that I did. My main goal for this J-Term was to become more fluent in Arabic, as well as to jump start learning Farsi, which is something I went more depth on in the second week of my Individual J-Term. By creating and proposing this J-Term once again, I was able to further challenge myself and allow for myself to learn both Arabic and Farsi in a more intensive setting. This allows for me to gain more skills surrounding both of the languages. Learning Outcome 2