#6 Final reflection on learning

I will like to share my conversation with one of the professors I've met earlier this year. This professor mentioned that many students come and go through the portals of NUS thinking that they are the best but what they don't realize is that their degree is nothing but a piece of paper showing their capability of memorizing and regurgitating information. He let out a sigh and continued that most students have lost sight of the importance of interpersonal skills which are way more critical than their accolades when they enter the workforce.

Reading ES2007S as a module is one of the best choice I've made in my three years in NUS. I particularly found the soft skills learned relevant and important for my future. These include interpersonal relationship, teamwork, presentation skills, time management and appropriate handling of emotions. There were many opportunities throughout the entire course for us to explore each of these.

We begin as a class of 14 students and I remembered how each of us sat in our own seats feeling awkward to speak up. However, we ended the course last week as a lively class, comfortable to speak up and having our arms around each other for kodak moments. These would not be possible without the numerous activities we did in class. I reflect on the process of crafting and finally presenting our proposal and through this, I realized that the perfect project can only be achieved through excellent teamwork. Teamwork is not just about doing our parts as delegated but extending support to our team mates not only in the aspects of the project but also each others personal life. By understanding and putting in effort to know your team mates, the team will be able to achieve outstanding results as we enjoy the process together. This is in contrast to being obliged to doing work delegated to us and working on it 1 hour before the due date. The project has also helped us develop soft skills such like time management. Most of us had our mid term papers as well essays due while we were crafting our proposal, it was important for us to manage our schedule. With that, we also had to learn to cope with stress. I am thankful for my group mates who were extremely supportive throughout the process and have provided me with comic relief and support whenever I was feeling stressed and overwhelmed with work.

ES2007S has reminded me about the importance of teamwork. Everyone was once told that teamwork is important from the day we started school but not everyone had the chance to experience what excellent teamwork will lead us to. When I look back at the entire process of discussing and crafting our proposal while typing out this post, I feel an immense sense of satisfaction. :)

I believe I will not be one of those students who walked through the portal of NUS and enter the workforce with an accredited degree but absolutely no interpersonal skills.

#5 My reflection of the oral presentation (edited)

1. Although practice makes perfect, we should "practice" by giving ourselves more chances to speak up in front of a class and to a crowd rather than holding a script and pacing up and down in front of a mirror perfecting the exact words we are planning to say.

2. Know our audience. An excellent proposal is nothing but a booklet of paper if we are unable to understand how our audience will react to our presentation and adjust our tone and information to what they will appreciate and be interested in.

3. Be concise and selective with information which we like to impress onto our audience. Choose what is necessary and omit the fillers.

4. Be a good team member by knowing what each other is presentating and provide support for each other even during the presentation itself.

The above are the main learning points for me after going through the oral presentation. I'm usually a confident person when it comes to giving a presentation however I felt slightly less confident this time as compared to before. This is puzzling because being extremely clear about the proposal's content and having the chance to present our ideas to Brad as well as our peer group, I should have been extremely confident. Looking back, perhaps the lack of confidence stems from the fact that I recognized at that point of time that this was the presentation that will really matter. The mood and atmosphere then also exacerbated my nervousness.

From the feedback received from my peers and Brad, I overused the word "hence" during my presentation. I agree that the use of "hence" will give an impression that my presentation was scripted (although it wasn't). The overuse of "hence" was mainly due to my attempt to be systematic in order to alleviate my nervousness. I thought that being systematic will greatly reduced the possibility of stumbling and tripping over my words, which I have a high tendency for. Reflecting on my presentation, I think I should have cut myself some slack and loosen up! This is evident from the Q&A session. After presenting my part of the presentation, I felt very calm and relieved. This, coupled with a good clarity of our team's ideas and proposal contributed to a smooth delivery by myself and my team mates during Q&A.

I will like to conclude this post by giving credits to my team mates for an excellent job. No matter how awesome a person or team is at generating ideas, nothing will be produced if no action or hard work was put into it. Team Titus is the best project team I've ever been in. Everyone cooperated and put in our heart and soul for the project, the team dynamics is so awesome that as I stood in front of the class, I knew I was not alone. Thank you team.