Final Reflections On Learning

Every hello ends with a goodbye.

My dearest classmates, 

This is the 6th time I would be writing on this blog and the last. It has been a good 13 weeks and now it's time for us to part.  But before I do, I would like to relate some of my thoughts, most of which I have been saving for a very long time.  

Along the long narrow pathway to our class leads to a small open window," the light at the end of the tunnel" I would often think to myself. How apt, given the fact that I had enrolled in such a class for the quest for enlightenment. I had never been one to look out of windows but there was something captivating about that window. I can't put a finger on why the window was so special , heck! I cannot even remember the outlines of the window. Was it brown or black? I guess I would never find out. Perhaps it was the way the light shone in and how it fell on the cold hard ground. I found myself falling into its gravity. Whenever I was early, before anyone came, I would stand at that very window, looking out .And as I stood there staring out, i would hear the laughter's from Dr Radhika 's earlier class punctuating the otherwise quiet hallway.

 I did a little thinking at that window. What these weeks meant and how far I've come.  I vividly remembered my first presentation(Dry Run on listening skills) and how it was a complete disaster , I clutched on to a piece of paper, nervously shaking and simply reading out what I had written . The subsequent presentation by Edwin, Ka Yan and Kristie hit the final nail on the coffin.  They were spectacular compared to our performance! My heart sank, it was only the first few weeks and they were already so good.  How am I able to catch up?

Quickly, I convinced myself that ample preparation was key, and I promised I would never let that happen to me again.

For the actual peer teaching , the preparation phase was a breeze. I had known Clarence prior to this class and Xue Hui was very accommodating to our suggestions. We prepared way in advanced and conducted rehearsals to prepare ourselves for the actual presentation.  And it showed in our peer teaching ;we were generally more confident and received positive feedback. For the first time in my life , I thought I might actually be good at this.

The proposal group was a different story. We were meshed into a whole new group with different people. I was worried about the group dynamics given that i had never worked with anyone of them before. The first discussion was quite intimidating , when all of them started taking out their notepads and laptops and starting writing/typing away at our discussion points.  But my fear was unfounded and they turned out to be amazing teammates. In my opinion, Yi Bei was like the leader of the group giving us the much needed direction and scope of discussion, you could always count on her to make the right decision at the right time. Ka Yan was always there to give her insightful analysis on the said topic. And we have Bernice who always went the extra mile(editing/compiling) to make sure everything worked out for the group.

But it wasn't always smooth sailing, I recalled an occasion when there was a conflict of ideas. We were debating on whether it would be better to target our proposal to the Ministry or to the School officials. When asked for my opinion on the matter I sat on the fence. Clearly I didn't want to offend anybody. To me the choice was irrelevant and either would have worked out the same.

A couple of weeks later Dr Radhika spoke about Submissive/Assertive/Aggressive behaviours and I quickly indentified myself deferring more towards the submissive. Like the video shown last Friday, this behaviour most certainly doesn't offend anybody, but it most certainly doesn't get anything done.   For that I am rather apologetic to my group for the times I should have been more assertive.

This has been an exhilarating journey . I believe we can all be proud of what we have done together in these short 13 weeks and how far we have come. ES2007S has been more than just a module ; for the first time in a long while it felt like I was in an actual class, with actual classmates I could put a name to a face. I have met wonderful people along the way and have made many friends from around the world.   

To my classmates, Edwin,Dinah , Andy, Xuehui , Kristie , Madhav , Akaash , Bernice , Yi bei , May-ee , Jasmine , Isabel , Xie Xin , Clarence , all the best for this semester and see you around in school.

Juan, Tobi and Ka Yan, Thank you for being with us for the last 13 weeks, and sharing with us your culture and experiences. I hope your trip to Singapore had been an enjoyable one and i wish you all the best in your future endeavours.

To Dr Radhika, Thank you for engaging us students and prompting us whenever we feel inadequate to speak out.  Thank you for your patience and understanding throughout the past 13 weeks. We really do appreciate it.

Goodbye and god bless.

Goodbye and god bless.

Goodbye and god bless.

Yours sincerely,

Yechuan. :)

Reflection On Oral Presentation

“And let me just cover one more slide before I let you go” Beamed the professor. 

Quickly I glance over at the digital wall clock mounted just above where I was seated. “ 11.50”, it read.  One more slide? Doesn’t she know I have the biggest presentation of my academic semester to deliver? Perhaps I should sneak out, because if I knew what her “ one more slide” meant it would mean being really late. Quickly I glanced back to plan out my escape route, but I saw that it was no good , I  was seated too near the front and I would cause too much of a disturbance. Resigning to my fate, I sat down on my seat and waited until she released us.

Needless to say I was flustered and only arrived in class at 12.15 PM. Despite the initial rattle , the familiar faces of my classmates calmed my nerves down.  Upon seeing the excellent performance of the earlier group, I had a glimpse on how a good presentation should be like. I took note of their inflection and tone and made a concerted effort to emulate their good points.

*Flashback*

Due to our conflicting time schedule we had only managed to squeeze in one rehearsal prior to the actual presentation. However we made sure we covered good ground during the short time we had.  We collated our slides and mutually agreed upon the fonts and background. Due to the lack of time we had to practise our parts on our own. During the preparation phase I was contemplating on whether I should bring up cue cards to jolt my memory in the event that I forget. Hearing horror stories on presenters freezing up after forgetting their lines from Ka Yan most certainly didn't help. But at the same time I didn't want my cue cards to become a crutch. The thing about bringing up notes, is that there will always be the temptation to refer to them.

In the end I decided to ditch the cue cards, I convinced myself that I could always use the PowerPoint slides as a giant cue card, should the need to refer arise.

I decided to employ the "Story telling" presentation style with the intention to change mindsets on childbirth. Given the fact that the targeted audience would be mainly the school cohort; with the Provost included of course, i felt like the presentation need not be too stiff . Slides were chosen to be minimal with as few words as possible, with pictures to guide my presentation.  Initially, I was a little worried because being in engineering ,most of my presentations are centered about mathematics and science, and I had never done anything like that before.  

To pull it off, I had to craft a decent script and that took me longer than I had expected. But that wasn't even the hard part, I had to memorise the whole script!  The problem with memorizing scripts is that we tend to be robotic and regurgitate whatever we know, but it doesn't have to be the case if we remember to input our emotions , vary our tone and inflections. Often the audience won't remember what you say but they will always remember how you say it.

12.50 and it was our turn to present. Being the first speaker i felt the burden to set the mood of the whole presentation.  Thankfully things went without a hitch,(except for the glitchy handheld scroll-er that wouldn't seem to respond at times.) well until the middle of my presentation when I actually blanked out. Quickly I glanced at the screen for inspiration and thankfully it came and I was able to finish my part. 

Looking back, ample preparation was integral in carrying out a successful presentation, the many dry runs i conducted with myself gave me the confidence to present . However  there were a few things I could have improved upon. Firstly ,I could have spoken a little slower to let the message sink in with the audience, instead of rattling on and on. Secondly I could have adopted a better posture because I felt that I was slouching(after reviewing the video on IVLE).

In sum , I felt like our team had done well except for the fact that most of us were a little jumpy that day. Perhaps we let our nerves get the better of us sometimes.

Let me end off with a clip from an old movie. In this video we see the protagonist Chaplin giving a speech , if you notice really hard you can see him reading off a screen, but it doesn't matter because the way he delivers his message is really inspiring. Do watch it if you have the time.

Cheers!