Critical Reflection

Module Learning

At the start of the module, my two goals were to be more proficient with my writing skills and speak better in a public setting. I am glad to announce that throughout the course of this module, I have learned much on written and verbal communication.

Firstly, for written skills, I am more knowledgeable on the APA style format on writing a reader response and technical report. I have also learned a myriad of written skills like grammar, structure, and articulation. The resources available like the student work examples and APA website as well as Professor were imperative on brushing my written skills. When looking at those resources, I would ask myself “what made this piece of writing great and informative?” or “what is the Professor trying to convey by telling this to us?”. Often, we know if something is superb and sublime, yet we cannot lay a finger on what exactly makes it that. I believe by imposing these questions, we challenge ourselves to dig deeper and extract key understanding of the subject.

Secondly, for public speaking skills, with the many instances of speaking to the class, from Professor asking us to read a text, to the formal presentation, gave me much needed experience and confidence. One takeaway I have is that public speaking just like any other skill that needs practice. My initial mock presentation was horrendous, because of panic, I was forgetting my lines and stuttering much. Hence, before the formal presentation, I rehearsed multiple times with my family and groupmates. With each rehearsal, I sounded more confident and stuttered less. Despite still being somewhat trepidatious for the oral presentation, I realized it would have been so much worse without the ample opportunity to practice. This resonates with the quote “Fear of death is greater than death itself”. Ironically, because of my fear of fumbling the oral presentation, I did become slightly nervous, letting the self-fulfilling prophecy set in. Introspectively, this can be applied to any apprehension in life, from trying a new sport to designing an engineering product.

Project Learning

For my second part of the critical reflection, I would like to discuss on the teamwork aspect. I have two main takeaways from working together as a group.

The first takeaway is that we need to be aware of our preconceived notions and think from another party point of view. As humans, our experiences shape our thoughts and form our opinions. It is precisely that, which makes the human experience unique. Because of that, one needs to bear in mind that just like oneself, others also have their perspectives. Initially I was of the impression that the Appendix needed to be relevant to the content, because of that, I was hesitant about of one of my teammate’s inputs in the appendix and was somewhat dismissive. Following which, he delineated his line of reasoning and said “hey, let’s not jump to conclusions, how about we ask Professor tomorrow”. The next day the Professor explained that the appendix is to store supplement information, and that some of his reports had longer appendix than the main body. Since then, I vowed to always consider the other person’s point of view, before jumping to conclusions.

The second takeaway is that I underestimated the impact teammates can make on an individual and vice-versa. When I first heard that the oral presentation was mostly graded individually, I thought “oh, everyone merely has to present their own part and will be graded accordingly”. Little did I know, it was far from the truth. While we were rehearsing together, we gave each other valuable feedback that cannot be obtain individually. In tandem, we also gave each other encouragement every step of the way. This is just as essential as the feedback. One event that struck deeply with me was my teammates reassuring me during the oral presentation when they sensed that I was nervous. A simple gesture of a shoulder pat goes miles beyond. By having teammates, we can shore up each other weaknesses, while further developing their strengths. The old Chinese adage: “three cobblers can equal a military strategist” or simply: “two heads are better than one” rings true. I am honored to be part of team ChargeAhead and I sincerely thank my teammates and Professor for their guidance.

Note: Having written this reflection now and thinking of my reflections at those past moments, I had an epiphany. This was what Professor Blackstone meant by connecting “reflecting on” to “reflecting after” on our last day class. There is no singular “reflection”, there is only an ever-increasing great snowball of reflections building onto each other, blending with each other, dancing with each other.