Pi Day or Math Day is celebrated on the 3rd of March internationally to rejoice in the spirit of mathematics. In my school, I too organized the celebration of Pi Day, in which I organized several stalls and designated areas for explanation of mathematical concepts, mathematical games of probability and statistics applicable in real life, mathematics related memes and jokes, puzzles and riddles, mathematical crime mystery, integration with physics on interdisciplinary perspectives and even a “match the mathematicians and physicists” to celebrate famed mathematicians and physicists for their contributions. I ideated many stalls and even handled a few stalls myself along with working on the presentation and scripts for many of the stalls. I worked on the theme-selection and finalised “mathe-magic.” This was arranged for the teachers as well as students of several grades and for me it turned out to be a wonderful way to express and display my love for mathematics and show people how fun it could be.

Learning Outcome 1 –  Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth:

During this project, I witnessed and encountered many scenarios where I had to make leadership decisions and calls and something that I realized and observed afterwards too is that I could rely on my instinctual decision making skills with respect to mathematical events and organization and some of my best and most creative ideas were formed on the brink of a discussion and this is something that lightened my workload a lot as I did not have to give separate time for brainstorming. Something similar that I observed too was my communication skills. When I was in a discussion about something with anyone, I failed to look at it from their perspectives and ended up ensuring my ideas alone. As soon as I understood this area for improvement for myself, I saw how it affected people and the morale of those around me and I immediately started attempting to rectify this. These identification patterns helped me grow as a person and made me understand many things about myself I didn’t know before.

Learning Outcome 2 – Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills:

Whilst working on this project, I had to catch-up on a lot of school work and syllabus as I was working on this project alongside my classes and even working on them during a few. Time management turned out to be an issue for me and catching up with syllabus in my subjects was turning out to be difficult whilst working on Pi Day. Learning how to manage my time effectively, making planners and scheduling my day as well as locating and removing sources of time wastage was something that I developed due to the this issue and this is something important that will stick with me throughout my life.

Learning Outcome 3 – Initiate and Plan a CAS Experience:

I initiated and planned this CAS project which was also an experience for a lot of other students. As mentioned previously, I worked on ideation for the stalls, the theme and the content. We divided work into several categories, decor leader, stall management and ideation leader and resource leader and we established strong communications between departments to run things smoothly. I also worked on the layout and design for the hall display and the table arrangements. I ran a few stalls too and worked on many stalls’ scripts and presentations and solely worked on many parts of the physics stall representations, handling it by myself. I also worked on the entire plot and mathematics of several stalls.

Learning Outcome 4 – Show perseverance and commitment in CAS experience:

Even after multiple challenges such as the ones mentioned above, including academic tests coming up and working through a rigid time schedule of early work and late meetings as well, maintaining a balance between the project, academics, physical activities and social gatherings was really tough, that too within the time bounds, managing the time effectively. Through commitment and determination, as well as the driving force that motivated me, my love for mathematics, made me brave through these hinderances and work effectively whilst maintain a good balance in my life, constantly reminding myself to adhere to time bounds and sections I set for myself and my wellbeing was only possible due to perseverance.

Learning Outcome 5 – Demonstrate skills and benefits of working collaboratively:

Communication and co-operation between people was crucial to making the Pi Day event work. Everybody had a certain role fulfillment of that role was as important as everyone else’s. Effective collaboration between departments showed me the benefits of teamwork and efforts put in by all. The amount of work that we were able to do in the timespan that we did in was remarkable and it was all owed to effective collaboration. Supporting and working with each other, developing social and group skills and along the way, learning the importance of distribution of work and the impact that a well associated, connected and informed team can have, putting aside their differences really made me see that optimum work cannot be achieved just by individuals, we have to work together.

These were a few of the most important lessons I learned from this journey, along with how it assisted me in growing as a person and opening my eyes to previously unknown aspects of my personality, hobbies, and cognitive processes, among many other things. This started a journey for me, challenging and deepening my appreciation for the parts of life I now understood. Additionally, it put me in a setting I had never been in before, encouraged me to accept things from other people’s viewpoints, and forced me to do new things in order to learn important life lessons and, in a sense, expand my knowledge and make me adept with the 21st century skills of importance and impact that will aid me in my future.

Video Reflection: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UTHl6OLD5k_DsVIcqpg7YuJBhu0iXV61/view?usp=sharing