Final reflection on learning

Before every semester, we have to through the pain of planning our timetable. I always put in a lot of time in planning it because I have to make sure that there is a balance between being able score, what I can get out of the module and interest in the modules I choose. This is not the case when I choose ES007S. I know that the amount of learning that I can gain from it is limitless, however I also know that I would not be able to score since I have been weak in writing (had to take ES1102) and presentation. I thought this module would be a good opportunity for me to strengthen my weaknesses.

Just like what I expected, this module has thought me a lot about effective communication. I find every lesson fresh because we get voice out our opinions, unlike during statistics tutorial where we just listen to the teaching assistant. Then again voicing my opinion was not easy for some who is listener rather than a talker like me. Besides that, the lesson setting also encourages me to think critically about certain issues.

Despite learning all the knowledge on professional communication, I experience difficulty in applying the knowledge.  There are times where I am disappointed in myself for not being able to effectively adopt this knowledge in my presentation and writings. I guess old habits die-hard. Hopefully, I am able to improve with more practice.

Overall, I did not regret taking this module. Our tutor, Dr. Radhika, was great. It was wonderful to meet and work with new people. I will definitely recommend this module to my friends.

Reflection on Project Proposal

I am glad that my group, consisting of Jacinta, Nazyra and I, managed to pull through this project despite the delayed start. In fact, I feel that we utilised the the little time we had left well. This project is one of the most time-consuming projects that I have done and I am sure we could have done better if we started early.

I find that this group is the easiest team I have ever worked with (I hope I am not the only one who feels this way haha). The possible reasons could be the small number of members, which made it easy for the group to come to any decision. Another possible reason could be how often we meet for class, which help us to touch base and prevent any members from MIA (this happened twice during my past projects). However, I am sure the interpersonal skills we learned in class were applied by the members during our group interactions thus increasing our group cohesiveness.

Besides that, I am sure the others members agree that we had selected a difficult topic. Our proposal is on the management of overcrowding in Singapore Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) and it is an area that none of our members has expertise in. Coming up with proposed solutions also required some technical knowledge which we lacked. We managed to solved this by getting the opinion on the feasibility of our measures through an interview with Dr Lee. Moreover, a lot of measures have been in place thus coming up with a new measure is mind-boggling.

We also almost did not manage to secure an interview, which would be detrimental to our proposal. It was difficult to get an time slot when all members and the interviewee was available. Nevertheless, this problem could have been easily avoided if we had started on our project early. I also feel that we should have done the interview first, followed by the survey. That way, we could have gotten the opinion on a technically feasible solutions versus those that were not feasible.

In summary, I feel that this project demonstrates the importance of having effective interpersonal skills. It is also a real life example where numerous problems could have been avoided if we start early. I also learned that it is important to put in more thoughts in planning which should be done first during the course of the project.