Critical Reflection

 Dear Professor Blackstone 

This will be a reflection of the key takeaway on the 13-week journey. I will begin the goals set during the first week of classes with the expectation to present clearly and sharpen my technical writing skills. These goals together with a timely reminder from you help to elevate our standard to the fullest potential which will be reflected in this letter; our final assignment. 

Module Learning; 

1. Presentation 

Throughout the tutorial, I am given countless opportunities to be heard and motivated to improve on the approaches needed to develop the relevant information to grab my audience's attention and interest. This experience is significant for my future growth as an effective leader in a world where feedback is limited and the lesson learnt in society comes at a cost. If I am not nurtured, I can see myself repeating the setbacks I had in class. A few techniques, such as determining the audience, were used to rejigger my content in order to maximize the attention span of my audience. Despite the fact that my last formal presentation did not go as well as I had hoped due to a known major hurdle, I am still pleased since the feedback received emphasized qualities that I had ignored for what an effective leader should be. I am lucky to have been given an opportunity to hone my public speaking talents as a result of this undiscovered opportunity that I noticed during my “filler” years.

2. Technical Writing 

Under your guidance, This is something that I am looking forward to when I think of effective communication as I believe it is an essential skill to have for every working salaryman in society. I'm plagued by a lack of command of the English language. I frequently found myself unable to keep up with the writing or fabrication of any letter because I was unable to think of anything. Although my technical writing skills still require improvement, I am more confident than before since I am learning a system in my tutorial class that I can see myself using in the future.

Project Learning:

In the comfort of our early education (secondary and tertiary), we would choose group members who we believe are like-minded and share similar viewpoints, making group work a breeze. However, after that comes the first exposure to dealing with people that have various ideas and approaches. This mandatory phase that all Singaporean sons must go through is none other than national service, in which we must practice our social skills in order to provide a personal neutral constructive opinion for our superiors to consider, which most of us struggled with and ended up agreeing with what is suggested.

Fast forward to university, where we have the chance to collaborate with a variety of people toward a collective goal, which is not a difficult task for me because I love ideas to bounce about to explore all of the possibilities before settling on the one with the most potential. During the ideation phase, our group had no big issues, but I believe the issue emerges when we failed to identify the key solution because our product specification is unclear, and despite being able to email the company with questions regarding their flagship product, we were left unanswered.

This incident demotivated the entire team to work on it, and my desire to move to a different product grows with every uncertainty I have. Finally, our group leader Bing Rui persuaded me to stick to it, and Karim, together with Yen Teing, contributed their part to keep the boat afloat, which inspired me to do the same. As a result, I find it difficult to see an end when there are several obstacles around me, but I have trust in the process since everything will fall into place seamlessly each step of the way.

Best regards,

Quah Yew Thye