Final Reflection

The last day of week 13 marked the end of the last lesson of ES2007S. ES2007S is definitely one of the most beneficial and enjoyable modules that I have ever taken in my five semesters in NUS and it is pretty amusing to look back on the first few weeks of the semester and remembered how I almost dropped this module during one of the bidding rounds. I was afraid that the constant work and preparation needed for lessons through the semester would be too overwhelming. However, 13 weeks later, I am glad that I trusted my instincts and went on with this module anyway! J

If I were to identify the biggest takeaway from this module, it would have been the working experience and interaction from the group project. Having to work closely with people of vastly different working styles and perspectives on certain things taught me the importance of compromising in order to produce the best possible outcome for everyone. To take, we sometimes have to give first.

In the initial group meetings before we finalized on the research topic, I suggested that we work on Cybercrime and Education in Singapore, something which I felt strongly for. However, I realized that my fellow project mates were not as particularly keen on this topic. Thus,we geared in the direction of education and welfare, before finally deciding on tackling the issue of congestion in NUS Shuttle Buses(ISB), (which was actually a topic probably done by so many others and I personally thought was hard for us to prove it to be successful).  Despite that, due to group consensus, we went ahead with this topic.

 It was then, that I realized how important it is to meet people halfway, especially our work mates-ones who we will be working directly with. This lesson serves as a vivid reminder to constantly see things from people’s perspectives and not merely fighting for my own ideal, when I venture out into the corporate world in future.

The group project also taught me important organizational skills as we were responsible for coming up with our own timeline and pace ourselves towards the completion of the project. In addition, during the proposal presentation sessions, I internalized the importance of listening intently and picking up verbal cues while my peers were presenting, as it not only helped me understand their topics better, but it also enabled me to learn from them in terms of presentation skills, be it their strengths or areas in which they fell short.

Finally, I have also seen improvements in my presentation skills. Being a natural fast speaker, talking at a slower pace has always been an issue for me, especially so when I get excited about what I am about to say! Dr Jaidev shared that making use of pauses, and internalizing them, before starting on a new section to consciously slow myself down actually helped quite a bit! The use of purposeful hand gestures was also one important point to note.

Overall, from the feedback on my final oral presentation, I was quite glad to have heard from my peers that I have improved. However, I still need to work on it to ensure that I remove my habit of saying “right” after I finish a sentence, which I tend to do in hope of gaining the approval of the audience.

All in all, ES2007S has been a wonderful experience, it taught me lessons I could not have learnt from books, and it in fact motivated me to keep improving myself, to be a better communicator and hopefully, a sought-after fresh graduate when I leave NUS! :) Thank you Dr Jaidev, for sharing your inspiring stories and interesting perspectives on the corporate world, and thank you ES2007s classmates, for I have truly learnt something from each and everyone of you! Special thanks to my groupmates Dinah, Mayee and Akaash, for seeing through the completion of our proposal, and making our oral presentation a success! ;)