Seoul Foreign School is an International Baccalaureate (IB) school hence there are ｒｅｑｕｉｒｅd programs such as the Personal Project (PP), Theory of Knowledge (TOK), Extended Essay (EE), and Creativity Action and Service (CAS) that must be fulfilled within the 4 years of high school. Being a sophomore, throughout May of 2020 and April of 2021, I took part in the Personal Project. Simply stating, it is a long-term project that “formally assesses students’ approaches to learning skills for self-management, research, communication, critical and creative thinking, and collaboration.” according to the IB. This means that students can pick whatever topic they would like as well as set a goal, and in the time being, they must achieve their goal presented with a final product and a report showing their research, planning, product creation, and final evaluation. For this project, I chose to learn to bake. It may seemingly be quite simple, but for me personally, this was not a simple task. In order to demonstrate that I achieved this goal over the span of the almost yearlong project, my final product of completion was creating a baking book from scratch.

As the project is very free and up to the student to get the project completed, the project's criteria of each element was self-explanatory as ideally there was no correct answer as everything was allowed. Therefore, to start off with the project, I decided to get one of the main steps out of the way, which was physically learning how to bake. Conveniently, summer break had been right around the corner, and it was also the best time to do this because once school started again, there would be no time. Being a complete novice in baking, I decided to attend some one-on-one baking classes to familiarize myself with the hobby/profession. I took around 10 classes total and every time, I documented my learning through pictures and a time lapse video of myself actually baking. This was a vital part in my project as it was the first half of achieving my goal. 

Following this step, the second half of my project was creating a baking book of about 10-15 recipes created from scratch or inspired by the ones I saw online. I personally found this part the hardest part of the Personal Project, even harder than the final report that supposedly was the part everyone dreaded due to its long length ｒｅｑｕｉｒｅd. It took a lot longer than I expected as I had to make a plan of the recipes, create the recipes for pictures, create a template for the pages, write the book itself, as well as create the final aesthetics that would finally complete this long process. In terms of creating the recipes, they were inspired ones found online and were made to fit my preferences by adding particular ingredients, taking some out, and tweeking measurements. The book consisted of baked goods such as cookies, cakes, and more. Due to being an overachiever in some aspects, this process took ages as it took me a long time to figure out what I envisioned and wanted to present as my outcome. 

Overall, even if it may have been an appalling process to finish this project, I think that reflecting on it a month after completing it, it definitely had its positive aspects. Through the Personal Project, I primarily learned and improved my time management, which I find is an important skill to have in life. Along with this, due to this project, I can say that I have unofficially written a book of my own completely made myself. Soon next week, it will be the exhibition of sharing our Personal Project, and I am genuinely excited to see how others in my grade took on this project as well as share my own!

Clare Sohn
Grade 10
Seoul Foreign School