Final Reflection on Learning

The reason why I took this module at first was because I finally realized that the daunting reality of having to step into the working world was creeping at my doorstep. I will be graduating this semester and, soon, will have to look for a job. I found myself lacking in knowledge about the makeup of a good CV, things to note for a job interview, etc, because I have been shunning away from them. Hence, with the simple goal of just wanting to gain such job skills, I took up this module.

Right now, at the end of the module however, I found that what I gained that were more significant to me were the life lessons. Be it the experiences working with our classmates, or the small add-ons in class about what mind set we should have when dealing with certain situations (which I personally like very much ^^), I find that these are things that really stick with me. Sure, book knowledge is important, but I think it can only make our work easier, but life lessons can make our life (including life at work) easier.

For me now, I kind of dread stepping out into the society. Just thinking about the possible lashes I will get from the storms of life makes me shudder. I don’t want to grow up, yet I want to mature (quite an irony, huh?). Nevertheless, we can’t stop the flow of time. One of the things I will keep in mind from this module is to work on broadening my mind. The video in the second last lesson which said that when we deal with an angry person, we can just imagine that he ran over his mother, and so on, was really good ^^

Overall, I am very thankful to Dr Radhika and all my ES2007S classmates (Chen Ruo, Markus, Vanessa, Jacob, Yvonne, Ding Long, Jie Li, Nan, Di Sheng, Liyana, Claudia)! The cookies we shared during our last lesson really warmed my heart ^^

Reflection on Team-based Project Proposal

For the project this time, I was grouped with Vanessa and Jacob. Overall, I have learned quite a few things throughout the course of doing the project.

During the initial stage, we spent quite a long time on google docs just deciding the topic. We were deciding between the topic about recycling, improving the state of prisons in Singapore and the defence system of Singapore in the scenario of a war. We discussed for quite a long time (around 4 hours?) about the prison topic. I, personally, also thought that it sounded more interesting. However, we were faced with problems, one after another, which explains the 4 long hours. In the end, we fell back to the safest topic which is about recycling. Through this, I learned the importance of practicality. I was more ambitious in the beginning, and wanted to do something interesting, but since the time given this time was not that long, the topic would have been quite difficult for us. Hence, I learned to keep practicality in the back of my head.

After that, we met face-to-face. Initially, perhaps we were still unfamiliar with each other so we usually stood on middle grounds, just saying ‘okay’ to everything. There was not much progress for a long time, just an increasing amount of input and no clear direction where our project was heading towards. After quite some time, Jacob started to be more assertive, which I thought was good because we started to get things done. Vanessa was like the glue in the group, the connector between people. At the later part of the project, I could also feel Vanessa becoming more assertive too which is good.

Overall, while working together, of course there are some conflicts, but I think what I learned this time is that some times, in order to win, we have to lose. For the sake of everybody winning, sometimes, we have to lose something ourselves. I think through this project, we all learned some things that we can take away which is really good. I am really thankful for the experience I have had through the project this time.

Evaluating Intercultural Behavior

There was once when we were walking on the street with our family friend, a Korean who came to visit. He was a middle-aged man.
 
As we were walking, we heard him speaking from behind and turned back to look. It turns out he was speaking to a student on the street, who was also a Korean. Perhaps they recognized each other by their looks and started talking? (I don’t know :3) The student had a fanciful haircut. What surprised me was that when he spoke to our family friend (who was obviously much older than him), he immediately became very tensed up and his shoulders were squared. He kept bowing and spoke very humbly and respectfully. Why this surprised me was because his haircut and the way he was acting did not match at all.
 
Through this, I could see the culture of Koreans' respect towards seniority. I am just merely guessing by the looks of the student that perhaps he led a more liberal lifestyle, being a product of overseas education. Nonetheless, he still showed respect to his seniors. When compared to Singapore, this conscious effort of showing respect to seniority is not such a predominant practice.
 
Personally, I prefer the culture of showing respect because I think it does not only serve the seniority, but the younger ones can also foster a humbler and respectful character. On the other hand, our family friend also mentioned that sometimes, it could get quite tiring too. There are actually quite many things that one needs to take note of, like for example, we have to take note that even our eye contact should not be too direct, but slightly angled, and so on. So I was wondering, perhaps when communicating with our family friend, there could be some instances when our actions or words could be deemed as disrespectful in the Korean context, but we were unaware of it. Perhaps on his side, he also understands that we, as Singaporeans, have a different culture, so he did not take it to heart.

 

What can help promote better intercultural communication, then? On our part, first, we can try to gain more knowledge about the Korean culture. The main idea behind this, I think, is mainly to lessen (and hopefully eliminate) instances when we actually do something that makes the other party really uncomfortable. I do not think that we have to practice all parts of their culture, not because of self-centredness, but rather, I think, like for example, if we have to do the angled eye contact, it is just not what we do usually and it will probably just come across as forced. On the other hand, on our family friend’s part, he could be more tolerant and understanding that we may perceive the meaning of certain words or actions differently (which he was already doing very well).

 

In any case, I think many things really springs forth from within so having respect for each other from within is more important.

Resolving Interpersonal Conflict

I was attending this stats module and we needed to do a project either individually or in pairs. Either way, there was no difference in the workload. I decided to do it alone to avoid the unnecessary hassle of having to meet up and stuff. Well, eventually, we all realized that we were all missing out on something as we got results that didn’t seem right.

Time went by and the deadline was drawing all the more closer. Then one day, after lecture, this guy approached me and asked if I wanted to do the project together because he wasn’t getting the right results too. I agreed, only because it was hard for me to say “no”. When we discussed, he pointed out some points (I’ll leave out the details), and through that, I somehow reached “enlightenment”. Finally, things were brightening up, and we were at the final stage of collating the answers.

In the final answer sheet, I input my part of the answers and sent it to him. Then, he texted me “I thought we were just discussing the answers and not doing the project together? Perhaps there were some miscommunication error..” At first, I must admit, I did feel a little cheated because the answer did came largely from me, but after that I just thought “it’s okay, without his input I wouldn’t be able to get to the answer too.” I chose to think of it as miscommunication rather than perhaps, self-centredness. He kept apologizing, and expressed his wish for our friendship to continue. After cooling myself down and thinking it through, I still declined because it was seriously getting awkward during lectures so I thought a quick way of resolving this was just to return to the old days.

Either communication error or self-centredness, I do not know. Well, but analysing this in an ES2007S way, it stems from either a lack of communication skills or lack of EQ. To me, having the truth blurred in this case is a bliss, but what would you do if you were me? Any better suggestions? Personally I thought there would be a better way around all this.