My Last Words … for this semester!

Looking back at my short first post, I have no idea why I became a rambling writer of long posts as the semester wore on. Perhaps the tedium of my other modules pushed me to spend more and more time expressing my thoughts. I believe the reason is more likely to be because Brad is such a great teacher and I did not want to submit sub-standard work for him and my long suffering blogging buddies to read. (It was still not great in the end and people had to endure reading my never-ending posts and worse, comments.) Admittedly, I was also lazy, the extra posts that I thought I would write (and asked Brad about) never materialized.

The irony is that I decided to take this module as I wanted to learn resume and cover letter writing skills. Also, I needed to practice how to perform well in an interview. I lived a cloistered life in academia and have never experienced much of the big, bad world of job searching before. A tiny mosquito put paid to any chance I could learn the skills I originally aimed to learn. There is this sense of frustration and annoyance. However, I learnt many other lessons about communication in this module and I even learnt more about myself. Apparently, my mastery of the English language leaves much to be desired.

I also made friends in this module and realized many others share my “pain” as undergraduates. They also advised and guided me along this busy journey. There were communication lessons to be learnt as we tried to criticize each others’ work without being mean or hurtful.

I cannot say I am an effective communicator now. E.g. I need to stop freaking out during presentations. My writing skills are still not up to par. I am not professional enough in both written and verbal communication. However, I have tried my best in the assignments and that is the best I can do at this point of time.

To quote my first post, “learning to express ourselves well is a lifelong process”. I wish everyone well in their future pursuits. See you guys around in … school (wallows in misery and despair as the specter of examinations looms).

Aftermath of the Presentation

If I only had 2 words to describe my feelings about the presentation, it would be, "I survived!" If you know me personally, the person I become when I present is totally different. It is possession, I always believe. Luckily, this time I was possessed by an "okay" spirit.

I am very passionate about this subject (refer to my biodata if you like) and I felt I did not do justice to the secondary sources I read. I am the fool who watched Steve Jobs' keynote address but still did not perform very well. In my anxiety to cut words and add pictures, I forgot to organise my slides and what I speak. Looking at the confused faces, I should probably have included more text and punchlines. I think I spoke too fast too and rambled at certain junctures.

I am grateful for Yuvraj's optimism and relative calm compared to me. I am a worrier and the short time we had to prepare just made me panic more. Furthermore, Yuvraj's laptop crashed last Friday and my laptop keep having wireless problems. However, I think both of us were acceptable given the circumstances.

Thank you to the audience for the questions. Dinesh, I liked the glamour question and I felt it was such a great question your group should address it too. I do not wish for a great impact but I hope after seeing this presentation, you would try your best to reduce and reuse. We still have too many years left to live on this planet to destroy it in our time.

Biodata

My name is Ang Shi Hui Annie and I am currently a third year undergraduate majoring in Life Sciences (Molecular and Cellular Biology) in the National University of Singapore. I will be going to the University of Toronto in the next academic semester to obtain a joint minor in Environmental Biology. Even though this opportunity came late in my university studies and I would be taking a costly step to graduate in 5 years (with all the accompanying costs of studying overseas) instead of 4, I believe that this money is well-spent as it is in a subject I am enthusiastic about.

Biology has always been my passion since my secondary school days. My interest in research is now towards evolution, ecology and biodiversity, in particular, microbial diversity. Also, I am keen on merging my research interest with my enthusiasm for green policies. An example would be researching on tailoring microorganisms for oil spill remediation or studying the impact of human intervention on a particular natural habitat. I have learnt several experimental techniques during my 3 years of laboratory sessions. I hope to brush up on laboratory skills in my honours year, especially microbiological techniques as that is my chosen honours topic.

In my free time, I volunteer with Students Care Service. I joined to help an old friend but stayed because I realized I loved children. I work with children in the centre who have issues such as hyperactivity disorders and family problems. Although they stress me out with their hyper energy and often nonsensical behavior, I continued joining the sessions as their gaiety never fail to cheer me up. Their erratic happy behaviour also reminds me of the simple joys in life and that my world did not only revolve around laboratories and lecture theatres. In addition, my other volunteer experience includes 2 overseas volunteer trips to Chiang Rai, Thailand and Yunnan, China in my secondary and junior college days respectively. All these experiences gave me a wider and more humanistic perspective to life. I see myself participating in social work in any small way no matter what my future career choice would be.

How to best express WHAT you want to say…

Taken from www.dilbert.com

My apologises for using a dilbert comic but I believe if you want to find comics to do with communication (or the lack thereof), dilbert.com should be your first stop. This post is inspired by one of my professors in the Life Sciences, who insisted and repeated lecture after lecture that we have to find our best learning style and our innate flaws when it comes to learning something. After taking the survey mandated by him, I found I would benefit from a mix of all styles (aural, visual, touch) so the survey was rather pointless for me. (I would include a URL, unfortunately, some links on the page no longer works.)

I am sure several people have described communication style much better than I could have ever done. The focus of my post, illustrated by the comic, is about recognising communication flaws and learning how to best accommodate it. No, I am not telling you to pretend that you can present like the guy in the comic if you lack a whiteboard (and need one)! I believe everyone has their innate flaws that years of education and common sense might not be able to erase (that is what makes people interesting). For me, I seem to always end up messing my presentation notes. Being a spontaneous person, I tend to jump into the situation and when my memory fails me, I will frantically refer to the notes and then fail to find the information I need. After several similar experiences, I realise the best solution for me is to prepare 150% and thus if I can only recall 80% during the actual presentation, I would still pass. This method is not for everyone for obvious reasons.

Recently, during my Singapore politics lecture, the lecturer played a video of speakers talking about Singapore’s future. There were 6 speakers from extremely varied backgrounds and each of them spoke from different perspectives. I will highlight three to illustrate communication flaws in each and how they overcame it. The first speaker was a member of parliament. He had copious notes, typical of a day of parliament where detail is important to argue your case. He spoke well, his message was clear but he had a few pauses here and there despite his notes. To make up for his hesitation when speaking, he clearly demarcated his speech into 3 points and emphasized them again and again. There were clear checkpoints in his speech and no one was ever confused which point he was talking about. The moral of the story is preparation is key (clichéd but true).

The second speaker I remembered was a Singaporean playwright. Unlike the speakers ahead of him, he chose to give his speech sitting down. He told the audience frankly that he was a fidgety person and if he stood to speak, his physical behaviour will distract people from his message. Throughout the speech, even though it appeared that he read word for word from his papers, it was still an entertaining performance. Perhaps, as a playwright, he is best at putting words to paper but letting other people perform his ideas. What I admire about his communication style is his courage to admit his flaws so frankly. He really fidgeted a lot, even while sitting down. Not everyone can do that and find ways to make up for their deficiencies.

The third speaker was astounding. She was Dr Catherine Lim, a famous Singaporean author and social activist. With no notes whatsoever, she gave her speech without any pause except for breath and seemed to have thought of her speech spontaneously as she spoke. She ended with a bang, with a short humorous poem. Her speech was very informative but the humour would have been ill-suited for a very formal situation, e.g. parliament debates. However as it was a talk for university students, it was just right to wake everyone up.

I am still learning to accept all my flaws and make up for them. I would be curious to know what your communication flaw is and how you accepted/corrected it.

http://www.cdtl.nus.edu.sg/success/sl8.htm Most of the links no longer works but it is still a cool website to visit.