Final Reflection on the Course

The course ES2007S has finally ended. What a huge relief! But hold on, no more Calvin’s environmental talks and others’ lame jokes? No more opportunities to learn more useful life skills? Now I am beginning to feel the loss. Looking back, I can say that besides the USP classes, ES2007S is the most interactive and useful course I have ever attended. What I have gained from this course is more than what I can describe.

Soft-Skills

Needless to say, the numerous soft-skills that I have picked up from this course are and will be very useful to my daily life. Here I want to highlight the skills that I have learnt in presentation and job application assignment.

Before attending the ES2007S class, I was no different from any other inexperienced students who tend to squeeze a lot of content into every single presentation slide. Reading directly from the slides without further elaboration announces the death sentence of the presentation. However, I only came to the full awareness of its gravity after my ES2007S course tutor Ms. Lim had shown us examples of bad or ineffective presentations. Also, I used to neglect the usefulness of certain functions in MS PowerPoint. I tent to put an unbalanced emphasis on the content of a presentation. The rest, be it the presentation slide design or non-verbal cues, were just peripheral to me. ES2007S has helped me to realize the power of visual effects that animations and graphics can bring about. With visual aids when used appropriately, messages can be delivered in an incredibly impactful way. After such knowledge had been cultivated, the actual equipment of the embedded skills was actually done through a series of useful practices. Indeed, the peer teaching session and project presentation are the two main important practices which have sharpened my presentation skills. After going through these, I have now become more aware of how to prepare effective presentation slides with suitable visual effects and getting ideas across with the use of such presentation slides.

When I went for interviews before, I normally did not do extensive preparations. That was because I believed in impromptu responses which would best reflect my true self. However, from my past interview experiences, I realise that interviews can be unfair and judgmental not because that I have shown my true self but rather poor responses to the tricky questions. It could lead to a different result if such questions were answered with the same content but in a different way. Thanks to ES2007S, I’ve learnt various useful interview skills which can help me to present a very good first impression during an interview.

Personal Development

Time management is the greatest challenge for me - a super busy student taking an overload of work in this semester. The immense pressure I went through was really a threat to the quality or work I submitted. The enormous amount of work for the module ES2007S was sometimes a discouragement. However, having a tutor who always inspires us to put in our best effort in whatever we do was truly encouraging to me. Though working on deadlines, I always made sure that I put in adequate serious thoughts for every assignment I submitted. While recalling the countless burning-the-midnight-oil occasions, I still don’t know how I have survived this semester. Maybe one’s potential can only be unleashed and realised when one’s challenged. And I’m glad to say that ES2007S is indeed an enjoyable challenge for me.

Working in a group has really helped me to develop inter-personal skills. Everyone in the team has different personalities and modes of thinking. To perform well together as a team, we need to know when to stand firm and give in. I believe that being understanding and considerate is the key factor in good team work. And I have learnt that we can do so by starting acknowledging and accepting our own weaknesses. What we dislike about others are ultimately our own shortcomings.

I'm grateful to my class, the class tutor Ms. Lim for your unfailing dedication and all my classmates for making this learning journey enjoyable.

Although the module “Professional Communication” has come to the end, I will continue to learn by practising the skills I have picked up from the course as the old Chinese idiom says that “learning is endless”.