GCD Competency - Personal Goal

Physical Recreation Goal (IYA)

I have completed the Bronze level International youth award for the Duke of Edinburgh. This is an award that helps students set and achieve goals for themselves by allowing them to figure out their limits and have a wilderness trip; either an exploration or an expedition trip. I have written about this award in another post (Area of expertise: Personal Accomplishment) but to summarize, for the award, I had created 3 smart goals for myself along the process of completing the award before going on the final trip. The goals were based off of 3 main categories which were a physical recreation, a service and a skill goal.

For my physical recreation, I set a goal for my aim in Badminton. This was my goal: “I would like to work on my aim in badminton by improving on my clear shots in 2 different locations. (far left and far right). At the moment, my aim for each of the spots is around 3-5%. I would like to keep training badminton, to get this to be 25-30% by the end of 6 months.”

For my service goal, I set a goal to help with the ‘Art relief crew’ at NIST and be able to help the community around me in general, if I get the chance. This was my service goal; ‘My Service goal for the bronze award in IYA is to auction out 2 paintings in the art auction with the service group ‘Art Relief’. The service group Art Relief aims to bring art education and relief to the specially abled community in Bangkok through the partnership with Steps with Theera. As a part of this service group, we sometimes go on trips to the orphanage and help teach the kids art, but mainly prepare a few auctions per year and other events to raise money. I would like to design and paint a painting that I will then auction out in the upcoming auction and hopefully make money to donate to this service group. At the end of these 3 months, I would like to have designed and painted a painting that reflects nature (which is the theme of the auction) and is able to help raise money for this service group, helping the community for less privileged students at the "steps with theera" orphanage.”

For my skill goal, I decided to improve my sketching skills in art. “I would like to improve my sketching and shading skills in art. This will help me with drawing for art classes in school and in general. I would like to be able to complete at least 3-4 full sketches and shaded drawings within 3 months.”

My main goal was physical recreation. This is because it is the goal that should be worked on and completed over 6 months/26 hours. All 3 of these goals have made a major impact on me by allowing me to create a schedule for myself, be more organized and know what I have to work on to achieve the specific goals that I aim to achieve. I set this goal by using the qualities of a SMART goal. Smart standing for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-based. By coming up with my goal for physical recreation, I consider how hard I would make it, how well I can achieve it within 6 months and how much out of my comfort zone it is as a goal. I have been playing Badminton as a sport for a while now, however, I usually play it for fun, and haven't really focused on anything specific, especially my aim in the game. This could really help me improve and I can get a number % out of it, allowing a more accurate result.

I then took action on achieving the goal. The first thing I did was to check what level I was already at. I did this by trying out my testing levels for badminton. I used 2 big cardboard boxes on each end of the court and was given a 100 shuttle’s to attempt to get it in. Out of the 100 shuttles, the percentage of how many went into the boxes were counted. During the training, I would do practices to help with my speed and accuracy for each of the hits. I had training for an hour every week for 6 months until I successfully achieved my goal as seen in the images below. For each lesson, I would take photos of the court, the improvement level, the shuttles in the boxes on each side and the accuracy of aiming from 100%.

When I first created this goal. I needed to plan when and how I would achieve it. I did this by checking my original ability/aim in badminton, to appropriately create my SMART goal. See how much free-time I had outside of school during the week, and planned accordingly with how I was going to complete my goal. I found out that my aim was not very good because when I first did a trial run of how I would test this goal, I only got 3-5%. Through my training with my coach, running around the court and playing with others, I was able to improve a lot in my general Badminton skills and complete my goal. I planned to go train once a week for 1/1:30 hours and that's what I did. If I couldn't go to training for some reason, I would reschedule to complete the goal and improve my aim some other time in the week or the next week.

I documented my progress for the goal using the website www.onlinerecordbook.org as seen in the image above. I was able to document my goals, each practice, add the time it was done, for how long, a few images proving my attendance and a note on what I did and how well I’m improving with my goal. The evidence in the online record book had allowed me to show them that I had properly gone to each practice, explain what I did and how I improved on my goal after every week. I added images of the shuttle cocks inside and outside the box and proved that I had done it myself. This allowed the assessors to know that I did it myself, how long I did it for, every week and how well I achieved my goal within the 6 months that I worked on it.

This has allowed me to experience new global understandings as a person. Before this and outside of school, I have never properly set a goal for myself. I have set small goals for specific classes but I have never been forced to document each step of the process and sometimes I even forget about the goals that I had set. However, in this situation, I was forced to think about it, do it and document it every week. This made me think of how important goal setting is. In life, you may not realize it, but to set and achieve goals for yourself truly feels good. This has been a great experience for me, allowing me to understand myself better, my limits better and how I can use goal-setting as a technique in the future. It helped me understand why goals are important and how setting them for classes will help me. It has changed me as a global citizen in the way I think of some things we are asked to do. I used to think that goal’s were not as important and just another ‘annoying’ until I realized that they're actually very important and help us as students a lot. As a global citizen, I have also realized that each country has their own goals and values, and by working towards them, they create a better society for every individual.

Before I had created and completed this goal, I did not know how to test my limits on my skills, physical ability and service goals. Now, I have learnt how to set goals for myself, create a timetable to achieve them and I now have the ability to reflect on how these goals will be useful for me in the future. I learnt how to have better time management as these goals were set to be achieved in a specific time period. This will help me in my extracurriculars and classes/assessments in school as well. Whenever I have an assessment coming up, I know how to manage my time better and can set a timetable for myself to see when I can finish it the earliest to create a smaller workload and less procrastination. I grew a lot from this experience as it helped me exceed my limits of what I can do by setting myself goals, going on the expedition, meeting new people and having a really good experience to get to know my limits in a better way. I am thankful that I was able to set this goal for myself and improve my Badminton skills.