Melody Chen, Class of 2016, Gubei Campus

My name is Melody, I’m from Taiwan, and I attended YCIS for eleven years. YCIS is a school that values creativity, and teachers encourage students to think outside of the box and to take courses in subjects such as music, art, and drama. I believe that through experiencing this type of encouragement at YCIS I have become a more creative person, and it also made me realise that I wanted to study arts in university.

I’m most proud of the fact that throughout my time at YCIS I played the violin, starting in YCIS’s violin programme in Year 2. It was a new experience for me at the time and I continued to study violin all the way through until graduation. Playing the instrument also helped me grow as a person, as I became more confident in performing and my music skills developed. In Secondary, my music teacher, Ms Davis, also helped me to further develop my confidence. I used to be quite shy when playing; however, she provided me with many performance opportunities and always encouraged me, helping me to become more self-assured.

For my Creativity, Action, and Service (CAS) project, I started a film club with my friends. At YCIS, the CAS programme offers a lot of flexibility in terms of creativity, and allows students to take charge and lead a project in an area they are passionate about. We started the film club because we wanted to share the fun of filmmaking with other students. We even had the chance to compete in a Shanghai-wide competition where we worked with professional actors and directors. This was a life-changing experience for me and ultimately helped me to decide to pursue filmmaking in university studies.

I found that by participating in these activities I was able to create many great memories, have fun experiences, and gain confidence and creativity that I’ll take with me to university.