When I first looked at the CAS “Creativity” requirement, I’ll admit my brain went straight to the obvious: painting, pottery, or maybe learning an instrument. I envisioned an art studio, not a classroom. What I’ve learned over the past year, however, is that creativity is far less about the medium, and far more about the mindset.
My journey through the Creativity strand has been loud, collaborative, and wonderfully chaotic, centered around three key experiences: founding and leading a Latin Club, running our school newspaper, and singing my heart out in the school choir.
Founding & Leading a Latin Club
I co-founded and am co-leading GSIS’s first ever Latin club along with my sister and my friend. Latin may be classified as a “dead” language, but I approach it as the very foundation of Western culture and thought. I lead sessions every week: teaching Latin grammar and sentence structures, but also dissecting each phrase we encounter so students can understand how this language has influenced other languages, including English. Moreover, I frequently incorporate Roman mythology, religion, and even the physics of Ancient Roman architecture into my presentations, which increases participation from younger students and makes discussions livelier. Our goals include reviving a dead yet historically important language and promoting the Latin culture, which we think is underrepresented in a society that favours the fields in STEM.
Our club is small, and it only has a few participants. At first, I saw this as a failure. Sometimes I would ask questions and be met with silence, simply because there weren’t enough people to start a lively discussion. It was especially hard to get students to open up and express their ideas bravely. So, I, along with my co-leaders, focused on making our lessons more interactive and engaging by incorporating mythology stories in our presentations and drawing on the whiteboard to capture concepts in a creative and humorous way. It felt really meaningful to watch the participants bond together and become a small, tight community.
Leading the Newspaper Club
I’ve always had an imaginative mind constantly brimming with ideas, but I needed a medium to share them with my community; because of this, I stepped up as co-leader of the School Newspaper club. We publish editions of our newspaper every term. I coordinate students’ works, ranging from creative writing and science reports to school news and cultural articles.
As my Y13 co-leaders gradually became occupied with university applications and IA deadlines, I found myself in a very exciting yet challenging position: I had to step up and take charge of the club. Initially, I felt a mix of excitement and anxiety, as I have a lot of responsibility on my shoulders. But this feeling was replaced with a warm contentment and gratification that I did not expect, as I looked around the classroom of students from different year groups drawing/writing during one of our weekly sessions. It was especially heartwarming to see a young student drawing a beautiful artwork with popping colours. I also loved the cute comics of a cat eating a bowl of noodles. I learned that not everything in this newspaper has to be perfectly polished, and they really don’t have to be lengthy articles. In fact, it is even better that students get to express their ideas in their own unique ways and use this opportunity as a creative outlet.
I’m currently brainstorming fresh and creative methods to communicate information to my school. For instance, I’m integrating a wider variety of media, such as infographics, audio, short videos, or documentaries, rather than just traditional text and pictures, into the newspaper, adding flavor and originality to the articles. I’m also aiming to design the publication in a more cohesive way so that it brings readers along a journey, from school news to global issues, all woven together smoothly. I’m especially interested in turning complex scientific concepts into digestible, story-driven articles by using creative analogies to make topics accessible to students. For example, I used an entertaining “resurrection” story in my most recent article on the CIRBE spacecraft: I recounted how the spacecraft miraculously revived in 2024 after previously being announced dead due to a power failure; it then discovered two new temporary radiation belts, helping to protect astronauts in space. Instead of lecturing my readers on the technology behind this spacecraft, I built the article around a storyline, so concepts like orbital mechanics and satellite technology could become more vivid and fascinating for our entire student body.
Singing in the School Choir
The choir has been my creative counterbalance. After the mental logistics of leading clubs, choir is where I go to stop thinking and start feeling. I participated in practice sessions almost every week leading up to my school’s annual Christmas concert. My vocal ability had never been the absolute best, and sometimes I struggled to keep up with the rhythm, but with additional practice at home, I felt confident that I would do well in a performance.
On the big day of the Christmas concert, I was filled with anxiety as we walked on stage in front of an applauding crowd. Also, I didn’t have much space to hold out the sheet music in front of me. Nevertheless, as I saw my parents and friends waving from the crowd, I felt a surge of confidence. My voice blended with my peers’ as we sang carol after carol. The concert ended with everyone, including the audience, singing “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”. As I walked off stage, I felt not only relieved, but also deeply touched by the harmony of the voices that had swelled in the cathedral. My creativity here is one of interpretation and release. It’s all about listening intensely, blending my voice, and becoming one instrument in a much larger one.
Looking back, CAS has completely changed my idea of “Creativity”. It’s not a separate activity, and you don’t have to do it in an art room. It’s a tool that you can use to approach almost any task. Doing these CAS activities required me to make myself vulnerable, to step out of my comfort zone, and they seriously challenged my problem-solving abilities. They’ve made me a more imaginative leader, a more thoughtful communicator, and a more engaged member of my school. Creativity, I’ve learned, is a way of seeing and interacting with the world, and that’s a mindset I’ll carry long after my CAS portfolio is complete.