Reflection

Brad, I know you'll be reading this.  I'm not sure if you remember but last semester there was a student who emailed you, asking if she could join ES2007S when she was a freshman.  That was me!  I wanted to bid for this module and thought I qualified because it was stated on the CORS website that 'New' students are eligible to attend the classes.  After calling CORS helpdesk several times, it turned out that CORS was refering to the year 1 students from polytechnics!  Disappointed, I was.  I was adamant to get into the class this time.  Never have I regretted my decision these months.  I won't dare say that I have picked up many skills.  Nevertheless, I'm definitely more aware of the importance of these skills.  I think it is good enough if I can consistently practise one or two of them.  

The main focus of this course is to enable one to communicate more effectively, in term of listening, speaking and writing. Without being critical in one's thoughts and actions, one cannot communicate effectively without causing unnecessary misunderstanding, which could mount to some serious conflicts.  I have learnt a lot and practised critical thinking from writing blog posts.  Mainly because it has given me a chance to reflect on my actions in the past and analyse them impartially.  I did reflect upon some of the communication breakdown I had.  They are mostly caused by the assumptions I made on my part and not listening actively.  I've always had the bad habit of passing judgements in my head every time someone makes a statement, thus not giving full attention and being biased right from the start.   I'm now more  aware of the possible consequences of my speech, actions and thoughts.  I would make a conscious effort to deliver my messages unambiguously, listen actively before judging and not to give misleading non-verbal cues, now that I realise how influential they are (I'm sure we all know after doing oral presentations).  Hopefully, I'll remember these for a long long time.  

This blog will stay put as a reminder to myself of what I once learned in ES2007S with my fellow comrades :)

Thank you for a more than pleasant semester.

Oral Presentation Reflection

First of all, I enjoyed the process of preparing for the oral presentation more than the actual thing itself.  For this, I have to thank Klara and Dave for being absolutely wonderful team mates to work with.  I can still vividly remember the jokes we shared and the good laughs over silly things that we did.  Team dynamics is an important element in making a team oral presentation a good one.  Simply because the transitions mustn't be abrupt and the content flow awkward.  These would require a group to be co-operative.  We had very productive discussion sessions, where ideas were flowing constantly and yet we were sure of the direction of our presentation.  We agreed unanimously that we wanted impactful presentation with minimal words on the slides.  We understood that less is more.  In short, we did not face any difficulty in preparing for the presentation.

In terms of delivery, I spoke faster than I expected.  This left me with limited time to go through the next point in my head before delivering it.  As such, the words coming out of my mouth were somewhat gibberish at times.  Apart from that, I found out (after watching the video) that my hand gestures were somewhat too 'lively' and distractive.

Moving on to the visual aids, I realised that I was rather nervous in the beginning.  It didn't start off as well as I thought it would be.  Nevertheless, I gained composure after some time.  I pin this down to over dependence on visual aid, where I had to constantly refer to them.  After the mock interview, I felt that I could do better with having the skeletal ideas in my mind and delivering them with minimal visual aids.  Through the video, I realised that I had the tendency to look at the slides more often than I needed to.  As such, I should have prepared less slides and put up only pictures that would help me explain myself.

In a nutshell, these 2 months have been a very positive learning experience for me, not only in terms of writing proposals and doing oral presentation but also in working with a team.  I enjoyed every bit of the time spent.  Thanks, Klara and Dave.  We shall go and have our hard earned ice cream next Tuesday :)

Einstein in the Making signing off.