Do you think you should or should not be able to drop out of CAS?

[Guest Marioti]

Ok so at my school the CAS coordinator doesn't allow us to drop out of CAS but will always let us join regardless of the time in the term/semester

I mean it makes sense to not let people drop out but recently I had some problems because I was in a service and a creativity CAS and I don't need any more service hours but I need creativity... And the problem is I get home at 6 pm 3 times a week because of this and I need more time to study

I asked to drop my service CAs and he basically told me to suck it up..

Is this how it is in your school

Just wondering?

[Kat_K]

At our school we have to do CAS outside of school and we get to choose whatever we want to do so long as it fits under one of the categories. So when our CAS hours are complete we get to "drop out" of that activity if we wish, I guess. But I mean I started squash, and just because I now have well over my 50 hours doesn't mean I'm going to stop playing – it's really fun (I was going to start playing at some point anyway, but I guess needing the CAS hours motivated me enough to actually get started )

For service, I don't know exactly what you do, but I going to guess that you're helping out somewhere those three times a week. I think in a way it's nice that CAS 'makes' us help people in ways which we might not otherwise have done. I think one of the aims of CAS is to find a variety of new activities that you enjoy doing and to continue doing them even when we're not obliged to do so, after the IB and such.

However, I mean there is a lot of work with the IB and if you're getting home late on many nights of the week, I don't think it's that fair that you're essentially being "forced" to continue. Maybe you can try and negotiate with your CAS-coordinator to only go once a week as opposed to three – just explain that you would like to dedicate more time to your studies and, since you have all of your service hours, you thought you could find some more time through this. I'm sure he'll be able to respect and understand your decision if you give a thorough explanation.

[by.andrew]

I finished most of my CAS in grade 11. My schedule was pretty irregular, but I got home at 9:30pm on Mondays, 8:30 on Tuesday 5:30 on the other weekdays and had 7:30 am jazz practices twice a week. It's pretty hectic, but it's IB Your school must give you a lot of homework, because I usually do only 1~2 hours of homework each weekday and maybe 3~4 hours on weeks where I have IAs/tests.

[Sandwich]

My school took no responsibility for CAS, you had to complete it in your own time - and therefore could stop doing activities in your own time as well if you wanted. I did my CAS all the way through because the requirements for the Duke of Edinburgh award (which I also did) meant I needed 18 months of everything anyway. It's pretty unfair to make you keep going once you've hit the requirements, though. Can you not just... stop going?

Nobody can *make* you do anything, and CAS is just a tick box. Once the box is ticked, unless they have a hold on you for some other reason in this CAS you're doing, making a speedy exit is fairly legit. Especially if you've attempted to quit in the right and proper way already. After a while in IB, I used to just stop going to things which were wasting my time, I got so fed up of doing all these things which weren't helping me one jot. If there are no real consequences besides a teacher not finding you the apple of their eye any more.. well so be it, in my opinion!

My school didn't finish until 5PM so home by 6PM would have been the earliest I could have got home on any day, ahah. It is exhausting though, constantly being back late. I would get home at 8PM three days a week and could never be arsed to do a single thing except for eat, sleep and do some exercise, my brain was frazzled and motivation at 0%. Although to be fair the knock-on effect of these days was that I did nothing on the 6PM days ; Ahhh productivity.

[Guest Marioti]

Oh wow I didn't know there was so much difference between the schools and how they ran CAS

At our school we have to do CAS outside of school and we get to choose whatever we want to do so long as it fits under one of the categories. So when our CAS hours are complete we get to "drop out" of that activity if we wish, I guess. But I mean I started squash, and just because I now have well over my 50 hours doesn't mean I'm going to stop playing – it's really fun (I was going to start playing at some point anyway, but I guess needing the CAS hours motivated me enough to actually get started )

For service, I don't know exactly what you do, but I going to guess that you're helping out somewhere those three times a week. I think in a way it's nice that CAS 'makes' us help people in ways which we might not otherwise have done. I think one of the aims of CAS is to find a variety of new activities that you enjoy doing and to continue doing them even when we're not obliged to do so, after the IB and such.

Yea haha I mean it's not that I dislike the CAS it's just because it takes a lot of time out of my day. I totally agree that it's a CAS aim to get us to try new activities and I like that about it. I just don't know if making us stick to it even if we don't want to is a good thing

I finished most of my CAS in grade 11. My schedule was pretty irregular, but I got home at 9:30pm on Mondays, 8:30 on Tuesday 5:30 on the other weekdays and had 7:30 am jazz practices twice a week. It's pretty hectic, but it's IB Your school must give you a lot of homework, because I usually do only 1~2 hours of homework each weekday and maybe 3~4 hours on weeks where I have IAs/tests.

It's much homework actually. But since exams are coming up I have to study seeing as we have to remember 2 years of academics

Can you not just... stop going?

Nobody can *make* you do anything, and CAS is just a tick box. Once the box is ticked, unless they have a hold on you for some other reason in this CAS you're doing, making a speedy exit is fairly legit. Especially if you've attempted to quit in the right and proper way already. After a while in IB, I used to just stop going to things which were wasting my time, I got so fed up of doing all these things which weren't helping me one jot. If there are no real consequences besides a teacher not finding you the apple of their eye any more.. well so be it, in my opinion!

I mean I always get the "talk" when I don't go saying that I signed up for a full term and should continue going, but I think I'm just going to stop because I really need study time And yes when I get home late my brain is just not working anymore