Blog Post #9: Final Reflection

After completing ES2007S, I firmly believe that effective communication skills is essential in maintaining strong ties with family and friends; and good working relationships with people at work/school.

Through this course, I have gained an in-depth knowledge on effective communication skills. Initially, I considered myself to be a relatively effective communicator, who pays attention to people's emotions and feelings. However, this course has made me realised that this is a one-sided opinion on my part. This is because I have learnt that effective communication is a "two-way" process between two parties, just like it takes two hands to clap.

The course has taught me to be more aware of my non-verbal cues and how to be an "active listener". I think the latter is what I lack in at the beginning of the course. Subsequently, I took a conscious effort in putting the skill of "active listening" to better use in my group project, during the interview and group meetings.

Overall, I have gained numerous hard and soft skills from this course. The hard skills that I have learnt include apply 7Cs in my writings, writing impressive resumes and application letters, writing a persuasive formal proposal and making a lasting impression during an oral presentation. As for the soft skills that I have learnt, other than learning to be an active listener, I have also learnt the proper ways and channels of communication and putting them to good use during project discussions and when gathering data for my group’s proposal.

In a nutshell, I would like to thank Brad for facilitating our learning process during this semester, my team mates Rebecca and Napalie for giving me such a wonderful experience working with them; and classmates (including my blog groupmates, peer teaching groupmate and blogging buddy) for making our class so lively and interactive .

Blog Post #8: Reflection on Oral Presentation

1. Preparation

During the preparation of my slides, I organized them in order to provide a smooth flow of the story in my presentation. I tried to rehearse my speech several times to ensure that I can speak smoothly. During the preparation, my team members and I stayed till late night to ensure that we had several rehearsals. Furthermore, we also met an hour before the presentation to rehearse for the last time. I felt that having the sufficient number of rehearsals is important to put us into a comfortable level of confidence in telling our story. Furthermore, we invited some friends to be our audience during the presentation and they gave us useful feedback to improve our presentation.

One problem that I believe we faced in our preparation was time management. We used most of our time to improve our slides on the spot instead of amending them before we met. Thus, we had to spend more time than we expected to complete our rehearsals. I also realized that it is important to have ample rest before the presentation as we tend to make a lot of mistakes when we were tired during our presentation.

Another problem which continues to haunt me is the use of bullet points. It seems that the habit of using bullet points is too difficult to be replaced by other style of presentation. Thus I tried to use slide ware to reduce the number of points presented all at once on the same slide.

Behind a successful presentation are tons of practices and rehearsals. Having ample practices allowed us to prepare ourselves well to face our audience with confident. And because the words we wanted to say were deeply drilled into us, our presentation can flow well and the points we wanted to emphasize were clear.

2. Delivery

As my team members and I have allocated significant amount of time in our rehearsal, we were able to improve our speech during these rehearsals. We hope to engage our audiences by having some of our classmates to disguise as student representatives. This allowed us to pose questions to some of our classmates which would be interactive and might help to gain attention from the rest of our audiences.

One problem in my delivery lies in my tendency to drag my sentences. I tend to illustrate a simple point with a long statement. Therefore, it is important that I have sufficient practice to keep my sentences clear and concise.

From the presentation, I felt that it is important not to have my notes or scripts with me because I felt that I would rely on them even more. Instead, the slides became important visual aids which also act as cues for me to evaluate the points reflected on the slides.

3. Use of slide-ware or other audiovisuals.

Most of my slides contain slide-wares but not audiovisual aids. Due to the limited amount of time I had to prepare my slides, I focus on the use of slide-ware to emphasize my points. I also used some interesting picture to gain audience’s attention and interest. From what Brad had taught us about using picture, I try to use some pictures as background when the picture do not have significant illustrative points while other pictures that stands out will increase the impact of the points which I want to emphasize.

Blog Post #7: Effective Communication?

I find this interesting picture while I was working on my oral presentation.

Hope you have a moment of fun. :P

Blog Post #6: Reflecting on the Research Project Experience

1. Being a team player:

The amount of workload that my team members and I are having now can be overwhelming especially when we are currently in the last year of our undergraduate studies. Hence, this project demands us to be able to coordinate our work as a team to meet deadlines and project requirements.

As my team members and I are from a different major but same year of studies, we share almost similar timetables and this makes it easier for us to arrange a common time that is convenient for us to meet and discuss about the project.

However, we still have to manage our hefty workload consisting of various school assignments and tests on top of our individual personal commitments (both in and out of school). I felt that my team members and I did an excellent job on that, because we learnt how to prioritize our activities and make sacrifices when necessary to cater to the needs of our project.

Overall, I have learnt that being a team player is about learning to accommodate to each other's working styles. At the same time, to understand and encourage anyone in the team who is overwhelm by the hefty workload at hand.

2. Doing research:
What I learnt in class is highly effective when comes to research such as conducting verbal interview with our respondents. Before the interview, our group would come together to discuss the answers we hoped to find out from that particular interviewee and we would complied them into a list of questions.

During the interview, I applied some of the 7Cs to speak clearly, correctly and courteously. I also learnt to practice active listening, so that I could give relevant response to what our interviewees brought up immediately, instead of relying on pre-planned questions that were drafted prior to the interview. I felt that this is extremely important to keep the interview process coherent and more natural.

3. Writing proposal:

As this is the first time we were writing proposal, we gained a lot of insight in writing professional proposal from advises given by Brad.

Despite we were struggling with the problem and purpose statement initially, we were able to manage through the project with everyone’s coordinated effort and constant supervision from Brad.

I felt that the use of wiki is highly effective for my team members and I to coordinate our effort. In addition, I was able to look at what other groups have done and to examine the pace of our work whether is it going in appropriate speed. Despite the technical glitches which wiki is facing now, I had an overall enjoyable experience to work with this interface.

Overall, I had a positive learning experience during the project experience.

Blog Post #5: Evaluating Intercultural Behavior

Intercultural Scenario:

During my third year undergraduate in NUS, I was given the opportunity to participate in the Student Exchange Program (SEP) to University of Arizona in United States. This experience allowed me to immerse in different cultural environment where I had the chance to observe contrasting behaviors between Asian and American students in classes and their different living habits.

Most Americans in Arizona relied more on verbal communication, less on circumstances and non-verbal cues to convey messages. Thus, they were usually direct, precise and explicit in their communication. For instance, lectures in the university was usually more interactive and informative where American students were proactive in posing questions to clear their doubt at the same time the answers to these questions also benefited other students as well. However, cohabiting with them could be problematic sometimes as they might lack tolerant towards other tenant’s habits and their strong sense of individualism created new problems to the community in the house. For example, they would complain how the other Asian roommates call their family during night time (which they had to call usually around 10pm due to time difference) disrupted their studies or sleeps yet they love to bring up their music volume and sing along loudly during the day, totally oblivious towards other roommates having their mid term exam around the corner.

In contrast, most Asian students (Chinese and Singaporeans) relied less on verbal communication and more on nonverbal cues and implicit information, shared by their own group in the communication, to convey messages. As a result, they can appear indirect in their verbal communication. For instance, Asians students in the university were much more reserved or self conscious and they would generally copy notes quietly during lecture. Even if they had any opinions, they would usually keep it to themselves or within their cliques. During a biochemistry class, a few Asian students gathered after a biochemistry lecture, commenting the way the American professor was giving that lecture. They were complaining how fast the lecturer spoke and they couldn’t catch the words. If they had approached the professor, they could work out a win-win situation with the professor. On the other hand, they were excellent roommate as they possess a strong sense of “Communitarianism”; their shared values on the importance of living as a family, to share what they have and accept/ tolerate different people’s habits.

What I learnt from this scenario:

I remembered Brad shared the concept of culture in class. He mentioned that the expressions of culture which could be seen like behaviour, clothing and food while those that were intrinsic were the underlying attitudes, beliefs, values, and meanings.

I believe to achieve effective communication across cultures, it is important to understand the underlying factors responsible for those differences on top of recognizing different behaviours express by people from different culture

Although, I did not had the same level of interaction with fellow Asians or Americans, I feel that it is important to treat everyone equally and humbly to prevent prejudice and to learn how different culture sees life in different perspective. Hence, the first step I took towards more effective intercultural communication was to increase my awareness of those crucial underlying factors starting firstly with my own cultures before I could continue to explore different cultural perspective towards values.

It is only with a better understanding of these factors that I can see things in the eyes of other people, to empathize with them, before I can communicate more clearly and build more meaningful relationships I encounter.

Blog Post #4.1: Personal Statement (Edited)

My experience in life is one adventure where I set out to pursue my goals and aspirations. One of my guiding philosophies in life is to undertake ‘Human Revolution’ in my own life; to resolve and take concrete action to surmount my own limitation. With this principle in life, I took full responsibility of my life to seek ways to polish and to build my strong character.

Since three years ago, I set my long term goal towards the field of research in chemistry. Beginning with that goal in mind, I worked with my short term goals, avoided being result oriented and prioritized my work to develop my soft skills which would be important in the long run. This is one of the important soft skills I had learnt from my favorite book ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey’. I saw how my life transformed from winning for myself to winning for others by taking my first step to be proactive in life; I recalled the vivid image of myself during my first year in university, boldly volunteered to work in my professor, Dr Lu Yixin’s research laboratory. I was determined to accept hardship and treated every session in the laboratory seriously, because every moment was an important step towards building my research foundation and to develop my interpersonal skills with my mentor and colleagues. The opportunity to work in a laboratory changed my perception of research as a job for hermit crab to one which requires tremendous amount of team dynamics.

My desire to explore the world to be my stage propelled me to apply for sponsored exchange program to University of Arizona. I was able to spend six months in Dr Victory J. Hruby’s research laboratory to engage in challenging research work to synthesize novel amino acid by developing novel synthesis pathway. Exploring into unknown pathways often lead to discouraging failures as it was extremely difficult to optimize the reaction condition for each synthesis pathways. But our dauntless mind and determined heart persisted, and eventually our team effort gained us sweet success in obtaining high amount of product yield and near perfect enantioselective chiral products. Despite my membership to Dr Hruby’s group was short, I was grateful to be respected as an asset to this team. This experience taught me the greatness of teamwork and perseverance.

To repay my gratitude to my country which gloomed me to be what I am today, I participated in various community services. Through this process of helping others to gain their own victory in life, I understood the importance of respecting people around me regardless of their social status. Being a trainer for numerous public performance, there were occasions when rehearsals and training with fifty participants twice a week became a chore. However, all the grateful words from my participants about how they benefited from all the past trainings at the end of every performance kept my heart burning with fresh determination. Thus, I learnt that being a trainer is not simply training others but it was a role to polish my own character and fulfill my ‘human revolution’.

An inspiring writer Dr Daisaku Ikeda once wrote, “No matter what kind of difficult situation one may find oneself in, some opening, some opportunity to fight one's way out, can always be found. What's most important is to hold fast to hope, to face the future with courage.” With hope and courage, I can overcome deadlocks in my life and open new frontiers in my research endeavours.

Blog Post #4: Personal Statement

My experience in life is one adventure where I set out to pursue my goals and aspirations. One of my guiding philosophies in life is to undertake ‘Human Revolution’ in my own life; to resolve and take concrete action to surmount my own limitation. With this principle of life, I took full responsibility of my life to seek ways to polish and to build strong character, and actively challenged my shortcomings rather than taking shortcuts and hiding my weaknesses. Thus, this enabled me to treat everyone with humility and to live a life away from self-centeredness.

Since three years ago, I set my long term goal towards the field of research in chemistry. Beginning with that goal in mind, I worked with my short term goals, avoided being result oriented and prioritized my work to develop my soft skills which would be important in the long run. This is one of the important skills I had learnt from my favorite book ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey’. I saw how my life transformed from winning for myself to winning for others by taking my first step to be proactive in life; I recalled the vivid image of myself during my first year in university, boldly volunteered to work in my professor, Dr Lu Yixin’s research laboratory. It was my courage and will to step out of my comfort zone, to be independent and to see how the world can be my stage; I was able to spend six months in Dr Victory J. Hruby’s research laboratory to engage in serious research work and to interact with fellow American students in University of Arizona under sponsorship from National University of Singapore.

Through participation in various community services to gain victory for others, I understood the importance of being courteous to people whom I was commuting with; showing respect for people around me (regardless of their social status) allowed me to inculcate humility. Thus, I could learn from others in every way. Being a trainer for numerous public performance, there were numerous occasions when training fifty participants twice a week became a chore especially when I played this role for seven years. However, my strong determination and perseverance, and the satisfaction I gained from all the grateful words from my participants about how they benefited from all the past trainings at the end of every performance kept me going through these years. I realized that being a trainer is not simply training others but it is about training my own personality and interpersonal communication skills such as empathy and active listening.

An inspiring writer Dr Daisaku Ikeda once wrote, “No matter what kind of difficult situation one may find oneself in, some opening, some opportunity to fight one's way out, can always be found. What's most important is to hold fast to hope, to face the future with courage.” With hope and courage, I can definitely overcome deadlocks in my life and future research endeavours.

Blog Post #3 : Application Letter (Draft 2)

Job Title :
Graduate Student for PhD. Chemistry

Institution :
University of California, Los Angeles

Admission Requirements :
1. Students from schools in the British tradition must have completed an Honours degree in first or upper second class.
2. GRE: General required for all and Subject required for international
students
3. 3 recommendation letters
4. Statement of Purpose
5. Supplementary information (similar to resume)
6. Departmental application letter

BLK 172 Hougang Ave 1
#12-1443 Singapore 530172

4 September 2009

Steven Nelson
Chairman, UCLA Graduate Council
4006 Young Hall Box 951569
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1569

Dear Mr. Nelson

RE: Application for PhD Graduate program in Chemistry Department of UCLA

From my research on various Chemistry Graduate programs offered in the United States, I understand UCLA offers a competitive and comprehensive Graduate program for aspiring chemist to enhance their research field experience and knowledge in advanced chemistry for future related endeavors. This program requires critical and creative minds to develop new frontier in different chemistry research areas, and I believe that I can fulfill the expectation to qualify in this program.

During past three years of my studies at the National University of Singapore (NUS), I was involved in numerous research programs in Organic Synthesis with Dr Lu Yixin’s research group to reinforce my foundation in scientific research techniques as well as to expand my knowledge in advance Organic Chemistry reactions. During six months Student Exchange Program (SEP) to University of Arizona under sponsorship from National University of Singapore, I had the privilege to venture beyond classroom learning to hands-on with expensive analytical instrument. Furthermore, I engaged in research work involving Peptide Chemistry in Dr Victor Hruby’s group with two pending publications. With these experiences, I am confident in establishing independent research in different areas of Organic and Biological Chemistry.

Apart from my academic experiences, I participated actively in various community services, served as the president of students’ council and competed in various sports events. These enabled me to excel under tremendous pressure and to engage proactively in my community events. I can be an asset to serve and initiate activities for the student community in UCLA.

I will be receiving Bachelor of Science in Chemistry Degree (Hons.) from NUS in July 2010. By then, I would have completed coursework in the 4 major branches of Chemistry, namely Organic, Inorganic, Physical, Analytical Chemistry and a Final Year Research Project, specialising in the field of Organic Chemistry. I prioritized my focus in Organic and Analytical Chemistry to gear towards my career goal in Medicinal Chemistry, an emerging area with promising development through studies on drug design and mechanism.

It is my goal to combine my range of experience with my ability to be an aspiring chemist. I am delighted to discuss my qualifications with you for the scholarship for graduate program. I look forward to meeting you. You may reach me via my email contact; patrick_lee30@hotmail.com.

Thank you for your time. I look forward to hearing a favourable reply from you.

Sincerely


Lee Kwang Soo

Enclosure: Resume

Blog Post #2: Resolving Interpersonal Conflict

This situation is based on a true story:

On 9th August 2002, fifty thousand spectators and performers were celebrating the nation’s birthday in the National Day Parade (NDP) except Mr. A and Mr. Z. Mr. Z was a participant in one of the cultural segment while Mr. A was Mr. Z’s trainer. Both of them were volunteers in their early twenties. That night was the tipping point of the conflict, Mr. A misinterpreted Mr. Z’s bending over action to be made to agitate Mr. A. Thus, Mr. A ran over and harshly reprimanded Mr. Z. Subsequently, both raised their voices and were pulled apart before they could start a fight.

Mr. A had volunteered as group trainer in NDP for three years. Each year, he would take care of fifty participants in his group and he was stricted towards his participants’ behaviors (who were volunteers too.) to ensure that they would perform up to the choreographers’ expectation. On the other hand, it was the first time Mr. Z participated in NDP. Thus, he enjoyed teasing other participants during trainings and defying instructions which irritated Mr. A.

Both Mr. A and Mr. Z got along during the initial 3 month of practices. The first rehearsal was the incident when conflict between Mr. A and Mr. Z brewed. All participants were supposed to stand with their props raised during the Grand Finale segment. But Mr. Z was reluctant to participate in this performance, so he sat on the ground while other performers were standing. Initially, Mr. A (in a firm tone) repeatedly asked Mr. Z to stand with no avail. On the other hand, Mr. Z was not willing to comply especially when he was increasingly annoyed with Mr. A’s overbearing leadership.

Gradually, relationship between Mr. A and Mr. Z soured. There were several occasions when Mr. Z requested to switch to another group (The request was denied as it was too late to change) and even suggested to quit from the performance. However, he stayed for his close friends who were performing in the adjacent group (Alpha). Mr. A made no attempt to improve communication with Mr. Z. Instead, he felt that Mr. Z was at fault and needed behavioral modification. Finally, the last straw came when Mr. Z bent over to tie his shoe lace. But Mr. A (not in speaking terms with Mr. Z) had mistaken his action as defiance, reprimanded Mr. Z loudly over his lack of discipline. This eventually evolved into a heated argument when both of them vented their discontentment over each other, raising their voice each time.

If you happen to be another trainer-in-charge of the adjacent group (Alpha) what action would you take (Mr. Z’s friends are in group (Alpha) as well)? What would you think Mr. A should do to handle the situation effectively?

Blog Post #1: Effective Communication Skills

Just as I was setting down to work on my first blog post today, I shut off any communication with my environment as my huge headphone firmly covered my ears. Apparently, I couldn’t hear anything around me until someone stood in front of me glaring in my direction. Of course, he had been frustrated with my lack of respond to his repetitive calling for me.

What an irony to be writing my first blog post on effective communication skill. Yet I had been reprimanded for lack of conversing skills. Somehow, this incident allows me to reflect on how Communication encompasses a broad spectrum of things - the way in which we encode and decode messages, the communication channel chosen to send these messages, and how non-verbal communication cues involved like appearances and gestures, are just the tip of the iceberg (not after I had quite a handful of criticism from him).

In fact every moment in our life, as long as we come into physical or any other form of contact with another living organism, communication network had been established. A simple hug we give to our mum every morning sends a clear message – we care for each other. In many occasions, we communicate our love to our pet dogs as they savor the comfort from our stroking around their bellies or back. Everyday we picked the communication channel, and next come the messages we encoded into the channel. Effective communication has become so important in our daily life to maintain strong and healthy relationships with our friends and love ones.

No doubt in today’s society, holding a respectable qualification can be a powerful spring board to secure a new job. However one who arrogantly boast his exceptional achievement in Oxford University will not be well received by others especially when he/she had already locked his/her door from any forms of communication with other "lowly" beings. Qualification alone does not bring us far in our career advancement as effective communication skills have become an important tool to climb the corporate ladder or shine in your first job interview. No successful CEOs or managers who gain staunch respect from their beloved employees/ subordinates can ignore effective communication skills. Been able to establish good relationship with your subordinates/employee and keep conflicts and disagreement to the minimal enables us to build strong bonds and team dynamics.

Perhaps an elegant flow of encoded message into the channel, follow by a beautiful decoding of the message leads to an effective communication. Sound perfect, but difficult to achieve because it takes strong effort to actively listen and empathy to respond tactfully.

Sometimes, opening a communication channel is just like taking a bitter pill because we need to take the initiative and courage to opens our psychological barrier against fear of negative feedback from the receiver. Therefore, communication involves taking risk and making attempts to open the door of somebody’s life. Reducing the risk by engaging ourselves actively in applying effective communication skills to break the icy barrier and eventually enters the warming heart of the receiving end. “The doors we opens and close each day decide the lives we live” – Flora Whittemore