Time To Say Goodbye...

After being part of this module, my good friend introduced it to me. She thought the whole course was fun despite cursing the heavy workload as she went through the semester. The first thing that came to my mind when I thought of Professional Communication was the amount of writing and speaking I would be expected to do. Being the only child in the family, I was neither brought up to be a social creature, nor am I accustomed to interact with others. But I decided to go for this module anyway because I know it would come in very useful to possess such life-skills. So here I am. 

I walked into this class without knowing anybody, though that wasn't for long! The moment I stepped into class I saw Audrey and found her strikingly familiar, like I've seen her somewhere at some point in time in NUS. So I approached her, asked if she was in Life Sciences and indeed, she was! One friend found! Being from the same major, it wasn't difficult for us to clique and we decided to work together for the first assignment -- Peer Teaching. I must say the peer teaching experience was quite good. The atmosphere was relatively more relaxed and I've never felt more at ease at a presentation. Audrey and I made a good team so I decided to work with her for the project, together with Jas and Gwen who didn't know who to form groups with. There you have it, the formation of The WonderWomen!

The project was painful, yet ironically enjoyable. The very first hurdle was settling on a topic. After exploring several possibilities ranging from environmental to transport issues, WW decided to work on the Alumni. I felt we worked really well in terms of delegating parts of the proposal and being responsible for our work. The meetings, whether face-to-face or online, were not only effective in the completion of the proposal. Those numerous meetings also helped in building a good rapport, which came through quite clearly during our OP. We had good fun, and did good work. Since I'm on this, I would like to extend my gratitude to the WW -- Gwen, Jas and Audrey! THANK YOU GIRLS for waiting for me to finish lab/class to start the meetings! I truly feel bad that I had to make all of you wait, but I really really appreciate it! (: I'm rather positive that the bond forged in this module would continue on as we each pursue different dreams. 

ES2007S has indeed helped me grow, both personally and professionally. On a personal level, I've learnt how to work better in a group, how to make my presentation a more impactful and engaging one and how to interact with people I'm not familiar with and eventually bond with them. These are the essential life-skills which I'd certainly not be given a chance to learn in my major, and these are the experiences which I would probably remember for the rest of my life. On a more professional level, I've learnt the ropes to technical stuff such as drafting up the resume, application letter and proposal. Although the nature of such writing is rather different from the usual scientific reports I'm familiar with, it has definitely enriched my knowledge and ability to go about tackling these genres of writing in the future.

Through this course I've learnt not only to be a more dynamic and flexible individual, I'm really glad to be able to gain experience in presentations and speaking up in class. Not forgetting the 14 friends I've made through the course -- that includes you Brad! :D So, despite the headaches, due to dehydration of the brain because we're always require brain juice for all the blogposts, presentations and proposal (no, headaches don't happen that way, I'm just kidding), as well as high-blood pressure for staying up till 4am in the morning to edit our proposal and serious heart-pumping during the OP, I guess I'm still able to say: 

I WILL MISS ES2007S LESSONS

Presenting To You: The WonderWomen

"Experience is what you get when you 
didn't get what you wanted" ~Randy Pausch

Our team was the first to present and that definitely put a certain amount of pressure for us to perform well. I thought as a group we did quite well, I wouldn't say we were perfect but at the very least there was smooth transition from one member to another, and each of us presented our parts with much confidence. The presentation slide template was good and Q&A was also very well handled. I believe each of us put in our very best and there really isn't anything more I could expect from the other 3 Wonderwomen. They were awesome (:  THANK YOU, WONDERWOMEN!

I wouldn't say that yesterday's presentation was the best I've done, in fact, I thought I did better in the peer teaching presentation! ): Perhaps because the atmosphere in yesterday's presentation was much more stressful and tensed as compared to the peer teaching. Nonetheless, for the first time (or not I can't really remember) I've decided to present without the use of a script. It was pretty useful because then I had more chances to have more eye contact with the rest of the class as well as be more focused on what I'm saying instead of periodically referring back to my script frantically looking for where I left off. 

However, one major weakness in my presentation was the fact that I relied too much on the presentation slides. Perhaps it was the survey figures, or perhaps I just needed the security blanket like what Brad mentioned. Such an action just came so subtly and so unnoticeable to me! So that is one area I think I could work on and do better in my future presentations. Other than that, I thought I did rather okay, with good posture, good voice projection and good eye contact. I had relatively good knowledge on my slides and what I was presenting. 

But well, this presentation has undoubtedly gave me valuable experience which might come in very useful in the near future. Even though there were flaws in my presentation, I wouldn't be too disappointed in myself because I know I can learn from my mistakes and do better in the next presentation!