A ‘club’ is an environment where students can share their research, past knowledge, opinions, and build upon their prior learnings with a new scope of perspectives. The Business Management club was a club created by my peers to provide us with a platform to understand more broad topics of business management not involved in my syllabus. The organizers also invited experienced individuals to conduct sessions and enlighten us with their knowledge of the field in more practical terms, rather than more bookish theories, which was interesting and new for us. The business club helped us gain better insights into the corporate world. I had a great journey throughout the whole club. I learnt new things and gained a new experience of hands on business management discussions in the real world context.
LO1 – Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth
I have taken business management (BM) as a HL (higher level) IBDP subject, I know I faced a challenge in participating frequently in my online BM classes and I was scoring average marks in BM tests. I know it is my strength that: I have a keen interest in practical business, share market, trading, investing, that I am a quick learner and that I can adapt to and apply changes in my methods. I decided to use this strength of my interest of the real world context to improve my theoretical knowledge and actually gain more knowledge about the how businesses function in the real market. This club gave me the opportunity to extend my knowledge on business management and to know it’s implications in a better way. During the discussions, I was able to understand how I lacked some knowledge in both, practical and the theoretical fields. The areas for growth through this club for me were to: have better communication, organizing my ideas and thoughts, and organize my answers well too.
LO2 – Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process
It was a challenge for me to open up and formulate my ideas well. Also, all the meetings were held on the online platform Google Meet, so interaction online was difficult for me too. Furthermore, taking up such a task isn’t easy with the rigor of IBDP doesn’t allow for us to make mistakes or late submissions, so it is important I have good balance. And I couldn’t ideate my research into perfect answers in context of BM as I had never studied BM before IBDP. After we concluded the BM club, I could see its reflection in my BM HL classes, as I was able to participate more frequently, fluently, shape my ideas better and I was also doing better in tests as they are based on real world companies and case studies.
LO3 – Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience
It wasn’t easy for me to execute this CAS, but it was quite doable rather than the other tasks as we had to do some research and prepare for interactions. And my peers accompanied me in the club and a few were the organizers themselves, so I could communicate with them freely and at any time which was a great help. Also, initiating this experience required me to meet the deadlines on just researching on a few topics and attending all the meetings.
LO4 – Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences
Even though it seems easy that we have to accumulate information on a topic, clear and concise research is quite a task. And using the online platform is a challenge too. It is evident that I was compassionate in the participation of this club as I did my research well and didn’t compromise my work/deadlines. I got out of my comfort zone and worked well. This is a really great example of how I’ve shown commitment to the cause.
LO5 – Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively
Working collaboratively has always helped me as I can put forward my ideas in a group task and not get out of my comfort zone. But in this club, we went through all the meetings as a whole team, so all my peers respected my opinions and heard my thoughts. What was also helpful was my peers and professionals giving us better insights and listening to everyone is a really positive factor for our better understanding and development on the knowledge of any topic. The skills we can develop from collaborative work are: being more open-minded, learning from more than one context, understanding that we always don’t have the best idea(s) and that we can always learn better cooperation. Like, we have had disagreements on a few ideas pitched in the meeting or on a specific method, however, how we deal with the problem is the topic of concern here. As learning how to deal with conflicts is also a really important point to understand in collaborative tasks. This was one of the best take-aways I’ve had from this club apart from the academic scope.
The learner profile attributes I’ve developed in this experience are: balanced, inquirer, communicator and open-minded. This is all due to the team work and collaborative discussions we’ve had in the club. After taking on this club, I started managing my schedule well between just academics and extracurricular activities. The BM club gave me a really fair chance to question a lot of things, in practicality and in theory. It has opened me up to a lot of aspects of the subject I study. The implication of being a ‘communicator’ goes hand-in-hand with being ‘open-minded’. As being a good communicator isn’t just about speaking what’s on your mind, it’s also about listening to other’s opinions and communicating your honest views. The BM club has helped me develop these learner profiles and my interpersonal skills .
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