PVEC Rugby

This was my first year that I actually carried through with playing rugby. While may not have been a good idea to go out between math papers and play an incredibly high contact sport, it was certainly a good way of relieving stress and applying all those math lessons on vectors. I certainly learned a lot this year, going from zero knowledge about the sport to being able to play in three different positions. Who knows, maybe I'll pick it up again when I go to university ...

How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Theatre is a bit of a tradition in our family, one which I am happy to continue. For the first time this December I got involved in a show that wasn't a school production, the Christmas show at the Pearl Theatre in Lunenburg. This year the production consisted of two short, classic plays, "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and "A Charlie Brown Christmas". 
My preferred role is not onstage, but behind the scenes helping backstage. Although I've tried both, acting doesn't have the same appeal to me as backstage because I prefer the opportunity for me to make the props required for the production. And actors would be hopeless if they didn't have someone to remember where they put things. 
On top of this production I was also involved backstage in the PVEC Drama Club's 2012 production of "If a Man Answers" and "Check Please", and I plan on being involved in this year's school production as well.
I enjoy creating things with my own hands, and involvement in the theatre allows that either from a carpentry/props standpoint or a sewing/costumes standpoint. The environment is generally creative, very social, and usually hectic. I have been trying to take as many opportunities to get involved in theatre as I can because it is something which I can picture myself pursuing later in life.

Looney Uni

This is a short time lapse of me going for a unicycle ride around Lunenburg, unfortunately the motion made the pictures blurry, but you can get the general idea.

We Scare Hunger

We Scare Hunger is an event held by Me to We groups every year to help collect food for local food banks.  Park View holds their event in Mahone Bay, and I've been fortunate enough to be able to help for the past two years.  All of the volunteers are split into groups and then given a route to take through Mahone Bay and knock on people's doors asking for donations for the Mahone Bay food bank.
This is a great event to get involved in because it gives you an excuse to get dressed up and go out on Halloween and actually accomplish something meaningful. Food banks are unfortunately a necessity, this year especially as demand for the food bank's services are the highest they have ever been in recent years. Most of the items provided by the food bank are privately donated, so it is quite an accomplishment to collect over 200 food items in one evening.
Seeing how grateful the volunteers who run the food banks are for receiving donations, and knowing that there are families who rely on the service to ensure they eat everyday is a fulfilling reward. Enough of a reward to make myself committed to remaining involved in any way that I can.

Cirque de Mertens

Most of the action component of my CAS hours will be working on what I call my "circus skills". These include juggling, unicycling, and stilt walking. I'm constantly practicing and trying to learn new tricks, occasionally involving two of these activities at the same time. The great thing about an activity like juggling is that there are always improvements that can be made and new things to learn. Once you can juggle three balls, you can start learning tricks, clubs, or add a fourth ball.

 

ACCIB

For these past months I have been working with a group of fellow IB students from Park View planning the annual Atlantic Coast Conference celebrating the IB (ACCIB).  This conference was an opportunity for students from across Atlantic Canada in grades 9, 10, 11, and 12 to meet with other students and discuss the IB program.
This will probably be the biggest time commitment of all my CAS activities. Our first meeting was before the end of grade 10, and our grand finale was this past weekend. All the planning and scurrying around ended with over 300 students arriving at Park View for two days of fun and excitement. And learning. Some of that too.
My role, together with Simon, was to sell the conference to students. We spoke in front of grade 10 and 11 classes at Park View, gave presentations to grade 9 students at Bayview, Hebbville, Bluenose Academy, and Chester, and spent a day in Halifax talking to grade 10 students at some of the HRM IB schools. Without a doubt this was the job that allowed us to have the most fun, but was also important because we were counting on drawing more HRM students this year.
The amount of work the group of organizers put into the event was definitely worth it, for us it was great to see those many months of planning come together. Hopefully the people attending found it just as worthwhile.

Amnesty @ U2

This event is from a couple months ago now, when U2 was playing a concert at Magnetic Hill, NB. Only a few days before the concert I got a message from the Regional Amnesty International Coordinator asking if I would be interested in volunteering at the concert. So my father, brother, and I made the long drive to New Brunswick in order to be there. And it rained and rained and rained. And rained. And it turns out collecting signatures on paper petitions is very difficult in the rain, but we slaved on through the day in the many hours leading up to the concert. With 80 000 fans on the grounds there was certainly no shortage of people to talk to. The night wound up with us standing five metres away from Bono in the most spectacular show I'm likely ever going to see.

I've been involved with Amnesty for a number of year's now, since biking across Canada as a fundraiser. All three of my years at Park View I have held small Write for Rights events at the school, asking people to sign letters and postcards to be mailed around the world in support of Amnesty's work. Amnesty is a very youth friendly organization, they make it easy to become involved, and this is why I have done so and will continue to do so. There's a lot of news out there that media outlets don't cover, a lot that they don't cover and should. By being involved with Amnesty I add my voice to the voices of millions of other people to speak for what we believe is right.