Swiss Cottage Secondary School

I have had the privilege to serve as the CCA president for the Publications and Media Club of Swiss Cottage Secondary School from April 2024 to April 2025. Throughout my time in Swiss, I have carried out various initiatives to ensure that the CCA develops further, as well as ensure the continuous improvement of the CCA. 1. Upon realizing that many of my juniors dreaded coming to CCA, I made it my mission to ensure that this feeling would be eliminated. Using my calm, cheerful and open nature, I revamped training plans to make CCA sessions more interesting and more engaging for all my peers. I also provided constant reassurance to all my juniors and forged strong interpersonal relations between almost all of them, so they felt more connected to this CCA and made them all feel like they belonged. I helped many of them find their 'common criteria' with the CCA to foster a greater sense of place and belonging in them. I also worked with many of my other leaders in my team to curate special training sessions which would promote bonding and connectedness between people. Through this, I learnt that leadership is not just about making decisions, it is about creating a space where others feel safe, seen and inspired which allows them to grow. 2. I also realized that the CCA's technical skills in photography and videography were subpar, and many of them did not even know the basic settings of the camera which a must was to know in the CCA. Thus, upon realizing this issue, I immediately worked with my training head (Cedric) and revamped the entire training process in such a way that it was curated to everyone's needs. It also came coupled with a tracking system where we would track progress based off scores and decide what kind of session the CCA required. This tracking system also displays my organizational skills. Furthermore, I worked with my team to come up with a hardcopy quiz which would be used to ensure that the entire CCA was in check in terms of technical skills. This quiz was highly beneficial as students would revise their technical skills to score well in the quiz, thus instilling all the knowledge in them automatically. This also displays my proactiveness and my desire for constant improvement of the community around me. 3. As the president of the CCA, I also gave many of my junior's tips on how to become better leaders. I helped a few aspiring leaders from my CCA learn what leadership means and taught them to the best of my abilities on what they could do to achieve it. I used my past mistakes and areas for improvement to teach them what being a true leader could mean to them. I would regularly text those who required me outside of school hours and help them to the best of my abilities. I even offered a mini crash course for a certain individual on how to speak in front of people to help her overcome her fear of public speaking. I helped numerous of them attain the self-confidence they required to secure the leadership role they wanted in the future, by helping them realize their capabilities and strengths. This displays my commitment as a leader to the people I serve, as well as my value of care toward everyone. It shows how I strive for constant betterment for everyone around me. 4. I also believe that I displayed effective leadership skills when it came to managing my team in CCA. As the president, I had to ensure that CCA ran smoothly, and media was uploaded to the Instagram smoothly without too many issues or setbacks. Through effective organization skills (such as use of tools like Notion), which I believe every leader should have, I efficiently delegated tasks efficiently to ensure the continuous smooth workflow, which allowed our system to be extremely effective. I always stepped in when I saw even one person being burdened with too much work, and regularly provided moral support when times got hard to ensure nobody was overwhelmed. 5. I also believe that I am a leader who is highly adaptable. I have often displayed adaptability in unprecedented situations in CCA. For example, I was able to handle last minute session changes in CCA by creating organized and structured plans quickly. I was able to efficiently delegate my quick thought of plan to my team effectively to ensure that everyone was well informed of the quick session change. I believe this skill of adaptability is an essential skill I have as a leader as it lets me ensure that last minute changes will not cause the entire plan / event to break down.

Being part of the science ambassadors (interest group) for 2 years, me and 18 other people were selected via an interview to immerse ourselves in a leadership exchange trip to Brisbane, Australia. This trip also helped me to hone and display my leadership skills, as it required me to lead my group members in various activities and challenges.

I believe that this shows my unwavering commitment to things I am passionate about as I take the initiative to help in whatever way I can when I am passionate about something. In my opinion, it shows how much hard work I will put in to do something when I am passionate about it. Thus, displaying my dedication and commitment as a lifelong leader.

Having a passion for fitness, I was the physical education representative from the year 2024 to 2025. I led the class and did my best to instil the love for fitness in my class. Especially for the NAPFA examination in secondary 4, I provided helpful tips and training strategies to my friends on how to ace all their components of the examination. I also provided constant reassurance to my classmates to ensure that they always felt motivated and encouraged to participate actively in physical education classes. Here is a short paragraph that my PE teacher, Mr. Michael, has generously typed out for me on what he feels about me as a leader: "Tanmay Garg was a student in my physical education class in 2024 and 2025. In his capacity as the representative for physical education, he has shown consistent progress. Despite his initial reserve, he has progressively grown more proactive and accountable in his work. He now proactively calls the class together for briefings and regularly assists with retrieving and returning equipment to the physical education storeroom. It is admirable that he is becoming more accountable and eager to help make physical education classes run smoothly. His growing sense of responsibility and willingness to contribute to the smooth running of PE lessons is commendable. With continued effort, he is showing promising development in leadership and teamwork."

Since a lot of my batchmates made mistakes choosing their subject combinations in year 2023 due to little to no guidance and experience learning each subject, me and my friend, Gurusharan decided to chairperson a workshop which would guide the secondary 2's on choosing their subject combination wisely. We had tasters of each subject for the secondary 2 students to experience so that they could get an idea of how subjects would look in secondary 3. This would better help guide their decision. Moreover, it also provided study strategies for students for studying each subject, as well as exposed them to various question types for them to self-reflect and judge whether they were up to do such questions in that subject or not. Overall, this experience displays my organization skills as the workshop had to be organized and well thought of to be accustomed to the needs of each individual student. It also displays my effective delegation as I had to delegate tasks to each member of my team to ensure that the whole process was smooth and efficient. It also displays my care as a leader as I stepped in to solve a problem that I saw many of my juniors having, to ensure the continuous betterment of the people around me.

Through my CCA (Publications and Media Club as above mentioned), I met 2 juniors who had an extreme screen addiction, averaging 8-10 hours a day on social media. As someone who has gone through something like this before, I proactively decided to step in to help them. I sat down with them and had a good talk on the negatives of using social media for such a long time and used my personal life example on how it caused me to suffer greatly. Following which I introduced some changes in their lives, which I had once done to help alleviate the issue. I encouraged and enforced screen time limits, as well as ensured their phone remained in greyscale to reduce dopamine rush when using their phones. I also introduced them to my self-improvement website, tanmaygarg.com, particular the post on "Social Media Trap" for them to better understand the negatives of social media and the drastic impacts it could have on their lives. I constantly checked up on them, and I constantly gave them encouragement outside of school hours to ensure that they would not give up and would be able to focus their energy more on other aspects of their life. After a 3 – 4-week period, upon checking their screen time again, their screen time had dropped from 8-10 hours a day to 45min to an hour a day. Despite achieving my goal of helping them to reduce their social media addiction, I did not stop there. To this day, I still make it a habit to constantly check up on them whenever I can, whether it is at school or via text. I also constantly helped my peers to become better people. Whenever I see someone struggling, I always do my best to help them to overcome their challenges and rise above them. For example, I am one of my friends struggling financially. It was instinct for me to step in and provide him with motivation as well as methods to help him overcome his situation. I encouraged him to just start somewhere, and that everyone starts somewhere. I pushed him to work hard to achieve all his goals, and even if he can't change anything today, his hard work will eventually pay off and change everything in the future.