Coming Out of My Box

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step
- Confucius


“I was and still a bad communicator. If I were to have it my way, I would work and live in a box.”

It seemed like only yesterday when I wrote these two sentences for the first line in my very first blogpost. Thinking back, I must say, for once, I am glad to not have something done my way. I did contemplate whether to drop this module or not as I felt that the workload is heavy and demanding. But my mum said,” You are going to need all these skills eventually, so why not learn them now?” And so I have hung on and “survived” to tell the story.

I guess taking this module was a first step which initiated many other things, like starting a blog (in the past, I did think of starting one but never actually get down to doing that), doing peer teaching, crafting job application letter, resume, personal statement, attending mock job interview (at least the next time my interviewers ask “what if we tell you that you perform poorly in today’s interview…?” I will not be caught completely off-guard) and of course, tackling the mother of all distress: the proposal and the oral presentation (we spent half of the semester on this, can you believe that?!).

To me, what makes this module very different from my other modules would be the part on peer review. Commenting is easy when all you have to say is “Great piece of writing! FULL STOP” but that was not the case. We had to give feedback, both positive and negative, that would help the writer improve his or her writing. I find this requirement quite hard to meet especially when the writer wrote better than me. I wish I could comment on more blogposts but due to time and ability constraints, I did not manage to do so. On a plus side, I learnt to be more critical, which was something that I tried not to be in the past for fear of hurting people’s feelings. I think that as long as we have a point, we can give the person our opinion (without sounding too righteous) and how the person reacts to the feedback is just beyond our control.

I have learnt so much in such a short span of time but even after completing this course, there are still so many areas that I need to improve on, especially my speaking. I know I still have a long way to go before I reach the level of a professional communicator; one who can speak fluently and confidently. Hence, my learning to become a better communicator does not end with completion of ES2007S or as they say, “Learning is a not a destination but a journey”.

To hammer in the one last nail for the whole time I was banging on about in my reflection, I can think of no better way except to amend my first line from my very first blogpost:

"I was a bad communicator. But I am not as bad as I used to be. I have come out of my box, enlarged it a bit, and now more people can come in!"


To all my classmates (in no particular order): Abby, Aldrich, Chee Siang, Evonne, Ivan, Ken Jie, Sarah, Sheryl, Wen Jun, Xiang Min, Yuan Ru (ok, it’s in alphabetical order), thanks for making me feel like I am back in school again…I have great time “communicating” with all of you and also taking the “elevator test” (though sometimes I feel we ought to take the stairs). And of course, a bigger thank you to Brad, for being a great facilitator and probably the only lecturer whom you can wave enthusiastically at from afar.

Reflection on Oral Presentation

"Mirror, mirror on the wall, how did..."

"My queen, I do not comment on oral presentation. Now, if you allow me to comment on your fairness, I must say..."

"I am getting a new mirror!!!"


I don’t want to blow my own trumpet, but I think I will start my self-evaluation on a positive note. I think (I hope) I managed to keep my voice from shaking, or at least reduce the shaking to a bare minimum. As the first presenter from my team, I was very nervous and I was actually “on vibration mode” during the Q&A session of team Venomous (uh oh, it’s our turn…). I must admit that for the whole presentation, nothing was more wonderful than saying “…Chee Siang will take over from here to elaborate on the proposed solutions”. Phew, it was like having so much weight lifted off me and breathing was 1000 times easier.

Voice projection- wise, I probably did a better job this time compared to my peer teaching. Anyway, to be honest, raising the volume of my voice to be more audible is not something that I can do effortlessly and so I probably did not sound natural during my presentation.

I think it helps a lot when you get some non-verbal response from your audience. At one point, I saw Brad nodding his head and it is amazing how this simple gesture can really inject confidence in the presenter. I really felt assured that I was not talking nonsense or digressing too far from what I was supposed to be delivering. And I was glad because as far as I could see, none of my audience was frowning and some of them were smiling and nodding their heads at some points. Thanks for the reassurance!

In terms of language use, I probably had some problems with my pronunciation as sometimes when I talked too fast, I tend to mispronounce and had to correct myself. I must admit I put my team to shame when there was one time I said “Visionaires”, which was supposed to sound elegant if pronounced correctly, I sounded like I just had a few teeth knocked out and it was downright embarrassing.

My biggest weakness, I would say, is my inability to maintain eye contact with my audience. I think this was quite obvious during my peer teaching as I kept looking at my slides or above the heads of the audience. This time, for the oral presentation, I did try to establish eye contact but maintaining it remains a challenge as whenever I tried to do that, I tend to lose track of what of I was saying.

If I were to rate my presentation today, I would give myself 6.5 on a scale of 10. With more practice (though I am not looking forward to any, at least for now), I believe I can refine my delivery skills to become a better speaker, and more importantly, a professional communicator who presents in a way that is comfortable to both the presenter and the audience (a bit overambitious though :p).


P/s: To Abby and Chee Siang, both of you did a great job for the oral presentation. Thanks a zillion for the effort and dedication you showed throughout the project. I enjoy working with both of you and I still find it hard to believe that we had just completed this exhausting task which looked like a monster on the Friday before recess week.