Final Reflection on Learning

I've always had this fear of speaking up as well as standing before a group of people to articulate my ideas. It could be due to my low level of confidence, as I was very conscious of how people would react to my responses, be it positive or negative. Taking es2007s has definitely encouraged me to move out of my comfort zone of being the passive listener, and take the first step to project myself in front of my classmates.

Despite the relatively relaxed atmosphere that my classmates managed to create, I still have the jitters when conducting a presentation. It could be the lack of exposure (I have never done much oral presentations for my other modules) that I am appreciative that es2007s provides so many opportunities for one to practice and learn. Over time, I found myself more conscious and aware to the needs of the audience, and that a smile works wonders. :) There is still room for improvement for my non-verbal cues, but I felt that I was a lot more confident in presenting than before. It was also heartwarming to have such encouraging classmates supporting your every performance and providing constructive feedback to help each other improve. It is really touching that we are not only improving individually, but also together as a class.

There is probably a long way to go before I can be comfortable with speaking in front of an audience, but I am really grateful to have learnt so much together with my classmates. To be consciously aware of what you say, how you say it and to whom you say it to seems so daunting, but I hope the audience understands why I am saying all these.

On the other hand, I also learnt many other skills such as resume and cover letter writing as well as the mock job interview. To be thrown into a highly stressful situation is enough to blow my brains out, but I hope I can survive a real-world setting after barely making it alive in a class setting!

All in all, I really enjoyed myself and I am indeed really grateful to be in this class with such supportive classmates and lecturer Mr. Brad. It was that feeling of closeness that I have never felt throughout my 3 years in NUS. This definitely makes up one of my fondest memories in my final semester with so much joy and laughter in this course. Thank you all for this wonderful learning experience.

Thank you.

Reflection on oral presentation

Ez-link card is gooooooood!

I admit that the elevator test really left a huge impact/scar on me back then. The very feeling of my mind going completely blank in front of my classmates in an attempt to sell my proposal was just too traumatizing. ‘What if it happens to me during the actual presentation?!’ I feared. It could be this fear haunting me so much that led me to sit down, and truly learn to understand my proposal.

Jian Min introduced us to a website, Prezi, that allowed us to create presentations that are simple yet straightforward. We opted for a presentation with few words and only relevant pictures in hopes of making a point across the audience. The presentation slides were really interactive (I get really excited when trying new technology!) and the pictures really helped in my visualization of the presentation and its flow. Meanwhile, I took the weekend to rehearse for my part and decided to give abbreviations to the points that I will be covering so that I will not be overwhelmed.

During the presentation, the transition between my teammates was smooth and hopefully the slides were engaging to the students. I particularly liked the use of photos to explain a real-life situation as it may be something that the students can identify themselves with. With the use of pictures and few words, we had to work harder to engage the audience with our natural charms (hahaha!). I made an effort to make eye contact to the audience and tried to smile more (I hope I did) but I noticed that I was pretty soft while presenting. While I felt that the presentation was really good overall, it would have been better if we had rehearsed together as a group at least once to gel the charisma of our personalities into the presentation.

Perhaps it was the nature of our proposal topic that was close to the hearts of many students, that many questions were posed to us during the Q and A. I was overwhelmed by the intense questioning and was panicking inside when they did not seem too convinced by our responses. I felt that I did not do a good job as I was unable to think on my feet to the myriad of questions posed.

Nevertheless, I’m really glad to have Jian Min, Mercia and Gladys as my teammates as they are so encouraging and fun to be with! I really enjoyed the process of doing this proposal as I finally got a chance to step into OED as well as have random chats with stall vendors in various canteens. I hope that my presentation skills have improved after coming thus far in es2007s.

Thanks guys for being so awesome! (courtesy of Gladys!)