A Wonderful Learning Journey

When I decided to take ES2007S, I knew that I had to step out my comfort zone, that I had to expose myself to what I am weak in, and that I had to spend a lot of time and effort in the course assignment. Now, at the end of the course, I must say I do not regret of my choice and, if given another chance, I will choose ES2007S again.

If I had not taken this module, I would not give myself a chance for blogging, where I learnt different viewpoints regarding the similar topics. After finishing each post, I enjoyed reading my classmates’ post as well as their comments.  However, I do regret and apologize that I did not participate actively in blogging, being afraid that my poor expression will “spoil” my classmates’ posts.

If I had not taken this module, I would not realize so many problems in my presentation. Fortunately, Ms. Lim and my classmates had pointed out them for me. I will keep these comments in mind and will refer to them when I am giving a presentation in the future.

If I had not taken this module, I would not meet Ms. Lim and my awesome classmates.  Within these thirteen weeks, our friendship is forged through class interactions, blog post comments, presentation evaluations, team projects and lunches after lessons. Because of you, my life of a graduate student was so colorful. Thank you, Ms. Lim and my friends. I wish all of you the best in the future.

 It is the ending time of ES2007S, and it is also the starting time for me to apply what I learned.  I will always remember this wonderful learning journey.

An Amazing Experience

Presentation is a big headache for me as I am not good at speaking in public. When presenting, I become nervous, worried about forgetting my words. This makes my speaking fast and sometimes it is difficult for my audience to follow. This time, it worries me again. As it is a team presentation, I am really scared that my performance will drag our team down. After our proposal is done, my fear is even stronger: the idea is so wonderful and I must make my presentation match it.

In the preparation, I tried to make my presentation easy to follow. My teammates provided many beneficial suggestions, such as using guide postings, making statistics into context, remembering key points other than speech memorization, summarizing in the end etc.

The big day finally came and I was more excited than nervous.  When it was my turn, I spoke loud to calm my nerves. I emphasized our goal and kept the audience informed that I had three points to share. But I could not remember whether I made the whole picture by mentioning the first, second and the third point when they came into places. The survey statistics were put into context and my own experience was added to make it more convincing.

However, being nervous remains my biggest weakness. The pace of my speaking is still a bit fast. More eye contact, gestures and facial expressions could be used. Some powerful words could be employed to show my enthusiasm. The scroll in my hand should be replaced by the laser pointer to make it more professional and less distracting. Also, I did not answer one of the questions politely, being anxious.

On the whole, I really enjoyed the presentation. I would like to thank my teammates Calvin and Lynette (and our demonstrator as wellJ), without whom such an amazing experience would never happen.