Friday, April 15, 2011

Reflections on Learning!

One of the best modules I have ever taken is ES2007S since my two years studying in NUS. From this module, I have really grown alot and become more confident! I am also very happy to know and make friends with most of the classmates in group 4. What I have truly gained in this module is the life skills, writing skills and presentation skills.


The life skills that ES2007s introduced, served as a reminder to me of how to deal with difficult people and to control my emotions. This module has provided an opportunity to test whether I can effectively apply the lifeskills to good use. I have learnt how to understand people with different personalities and try to empathsise with them. Moreover, I have learnt to be a good listener to find out what problems my group members faced when doing the project. From there, I will try to provide advice and see if I can help them on my part. My group members also listen to my problems and we help each other whenever we can. We get to know each other better as we shared our own personal experience together. From there, I have gained insights of how to deal with problems with different sets of methods.


One of the challenges faced by me is getting the international schools' interviews. Having no connections with anyone from the foreign schools make it even harder for my group to get an interview response as compared to the local schools. Furthermore, this is my first time contacting several private organisations to request for an interview. This was the time where I really have to make use of the interview skills which I have gone through during the peer teaching to good use. As I am not very good at English, I have to read through the emails several times before clicking the send button. Nonetheless, this has led me to be more careful whenever I send emails to anyone. Moreover, I learnt to be more confident of myself when I spoke to the management staff of the international schools, making sure that I do not stumble when explaining myself and convince them to accept the interview. All these are really invaluable experience that I have gained throughout this course. There were also times that I felt frustrated as the intended interviewees did not respond to my emails or phonecalls. But surprisingly, my group have secured two schools' interviews on the same day after spamming many emails. That really makes my day and make me realised that as long there is a will, there sure to be a way out!


I think my group has succeeded in presenting our project is because all of us are open-minded and willing to listen to everyone's ideas and opinions. It is impossible to have a perfect group where everyone is perfect. What we can do is to work with whatever resources we have and gather everyone's strengths together, making the imperfections into perfections. I will say that I am very lucky to have cooperative and responsible team members (Yu Tian, Paula and Isaac) in my group. I really enjoyed working with them.


I hope that even after ES2007S, I will continue to apply what I have learnt to good use. I know it is inevitable that I may meet monsters in the future. But I will remind myself of EQ! No matter what kind of monsters I meet, I can still deal with them and not let them affect me in anyway. At the same time, I do not believe that I will be so unlucky to meet monsters all the time, I am sure to meet some good people. With communication skills I have learnt, I hope to establish good relationship with everyone.


12 weeks have come to an end really fast, just like a flash... But I am sure that I will miss the class discussions I have together with my classmates and Brad's funny stories. Here, I want to wish everyone all the best in their exams and future endeavours! By the way, after the end of ES2007S, I still do not know how to add the blogging list. Can anyone teach me how to add the blogging list to my blog? I always have to go to jac's or benjamin's blog to view other classmates blog. Thank you.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Reflections on OP!

Yes!!! OP is finally OVER! :) I am pleased with my performance today! I can confidently say that I have improved from the mock oral presentation and this makes my day! Thanks to the mock OP and my group members who stayed back with me for the rehersal on last thursday. The mock OP really helped me in identifying my weaknesses.


Before the mock OP, I thought I am already prepared to present in front of my audience. However, I just lost my confidence as the audience looked bored and the surrounding was quite noisy. As I become more worried, my mind became blank, err... ermx... hmm... plus many broken sentences. But I try to get over with it and tell myself to move on and see how I can improve from there. So before the actual OP, I tried practicing at home and recorded myself. From the video, I looked like a "ninja turtle" (hunchback posture) and kept swaying with my hands. So I have to constantly remind myself in my head "NO NINJA TURTLE!!!" It is really stressful before OP because I need to remember so many things at the same time; No ninja turtle, no swaying hands, the points to say during the OP, eye contact, showing passion and SMILE! Initially when Paula passed the clicker to me, my heart raced so fast. But I try to overcome this nervousness by smiling and speak at a slower pace and it is effective! I think my weakness is that I did have eye contact with all my audience. I will work harder to engage everyone if I have a presentation in the future!


Throughout the preparation process for OP, the most important thing I have learnt is to have confidence in myself! I also want to thank my group members for encouraging me whenever I feel inconfident of myself. I really enjoyed this learning process as I am able to receive valuable feedback from my peers on my performance. From there I can know my strengths and weakness and make improvements. With the OP, I have gained insights on how to design and prepare interesting powerpoint slides to engage audience. After ES2007S, I hope to learn more skills like photoshop and apply the effective communication skills in my everyday life! http://youtu.be/zRVjmeGg1Oo http://youtu.be/VWXKcYHw8YY http://youtu.be/RFV8XFhqsQI