Module learning
At the start
of the course, I aimed to be better at presentations, and at writing letters and
emails due to the importance of these skills in my future careers. I believe that
the extra presentations on topics such as the P-E Elements of Reasoning and
frequent speaking of the content displayed during class improved my ability to
speak clearly and accurately which in turn has had a positive impact on my presentation
skills. The assignments on evaluating essays and practices on topics such as paraphrasing
helped me in being more familiar with the proper structure and what are the common
mistakes to avoid when writing letters, emails, essays and more.
Doing peer reviews
helped me gain an insight into the correct way of typing out an assignment and helped
to prevent me from making the same mistakes, as I feel that when I am involved
in the process, I can learn whilst compared to if I was just listening to words
without actual practice, I might forget what was taught. I try to speak out as often
as I can during class as well to further improve my confidence in speaking in
front of a crowd.
However, I believe
that my presentation and writing skills are still not up to my expectations, there
is always room for improvement. From the feedback given from my final presentation,
the key areas that I am focused on improving on are the rate of my speech and how
to end off presentations as mine was quite abrupt. Through the multiple essays
and assignments, I have written, I am aware of how I still make certain common mistakes,
most promptly being comma splices and unrequired capitalisation.
In the end, the
goals that I set to achieve at the start of the course were met as I felt there
were improvements over previous years but there is always something new to learn
and improve on.
Project learning
During the
project assignment, my team was deciding on who should be the group leader and
I felt like I wanted to challenge myself with a leadership role due to my
aspirations of having leadership positions in my future career as mentioned in
my letter of self-introduction. Hence, I took up the position of the group
leader as I think it would be a good form of exposure to what being a leader
would be like.
Initially, the tasks were relatively simple and did not
require many delegations or instructions. However, as things started to
progress such as needing to do research into our chosen topic or writing out
the report, I needed to delegate tasks by finding out which team members are
more proficient at doing which tasks and give reminders on what was to be completed
as we might forget due to the packed schedule that we have. I am lucky to have
team members that are quite initiative that offer to help in what they can with
no complaints and provide valuable input to make our project assignment as good
as it can be.
I learnt that not everyone will have the same working style
as me and it is essential to compromise to have a cohesive team. Team discussions
are essential to ensure the task to be completed is done correctly and for the
report to have the same flow throughout. Any errors or points that are brought
across also must be done in a polite yet clear manner to prevent any arguments.
Our ideas can come together and have inputs from several points of view to
produce the best version of the project we are able to come up with.
Through this experience of being a group leader and working
in a team for this short period of time, I have learnt that being in a leadership
position can be stressful, but it is fulfilling. Even though I sometimes prefer
working alone as it is easier for things to flow better, when working
with the right team members, group projects can be a fun experience even with
the countless sleepless nights.
