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.