During my first week of Effective Communication, Professor
Blackstone told us to list down some of our goals for this module in our
self-introductory email. One of my goals was to refine my public speaking abilities.
Even though I knew I could have done a lot better with my oral presentation, I
believed I had worked my hardest to be confident. As I mentioned in my letter,
communicating in a large crowd has always been a challenge for me. The oral
presentation moved me out of my comfort zone and forced me to confront one of
my greatest fears. However, there will always room for improvements. Good
communication takes time and effort. For the time being, I will continue to
articulate myself while I am with my friends and I see this to hone my public
speaking skills, such as speaking confidently and clearly.
Besides, I said that I wanted to develop my writing
abilities. I have been subjected to a variety of reports and articles online
during the last 12 weeks of Effective Communication. I have started to see how
their writing flows and how the writers bring their words into the essay after
reading them. To be honest, I am not a big fan of reading. Nevertheless, I
spent countless hours on my research to find a suitable article for my summary
reader’s response. This helps me to correct grammatical mistakes in my prose
and improve the consistency of my sentences. Gradually, I start to develop a
reading habit, and now I strive to read one book every week.
For my research project, I managed the benefits and
drawbacks of the proposed solutions. Saira, Cheng Quan, and I came from
different backgrounds, but we all managed to work towards the same goal; to help
one another while improving our individual communication skills. Saira had the
most work experience, so she was the one who guided me and Cheng Quan through
our research project. There were moments where we had opposing viewpoints, but
we were able to discuss and work it out. This allows me to relate to a
real-life workplace situation in which we can have disagreements along the way,
but if I can communicate effectively with my co-workers, they can respect my
point of view and where I am coming from.
When it comes to our presenting skills, usually we will do a
mock presentation amongst ourselves and give each other input so that we can
learn from our mistakes. This is the opportunity for me to confront my worries
and get outside of my comfort zone. I discovered that it is best to make the
slides as short as possible. That was to ensure that we could keep the audience
focused throughout the presentation. As for writing a technical report, it was
critical to be concise and persuasive to keep the report clear to retain
stakeholder engagement in the report.
One of the key takeaways I learned from this research project
is how to interact closely with individuals I have never worked with before.
This is a lesson I will apply in my future career since I will be working with
people from diverse backgrounds.
To summarize, I am extremely proud of how my team members
accomplished their goals under Professor Blackstone's supervision, and I would
like to express my heartfelt gratitude to him on behalf of them.
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