Bird!

Saw this bird at lunch today, taking shelter from the rain beside a pot. (It was raining rather heavily when this picture was taken, but you can't really see that from the picture.)

Thought it was cute.

EDIT: Hah, forgot that this site uses HTML, not forum display tags. Image fixed.

It's almost over, eh?

Earlier this year, I failed to register for CS1102C due to timetable clashes with other modules. After swearing a bit and complaining online to my friends, I remembered an email I received from whoever it is who sends all those emails, informing students about this module. So then I thought, "Heck, why not? Professional Communication sounds like a useful thing to learn."

One semester later, I feel I've learned plenty. We all had to write personal statements, resumes, application letters, emails, proposals... We learned more than just the theory of writing well. We had to put it into practice, and I think that's actually one of the most important things we gained from this module. We gained experience and a measure of confidence. We had a chance to see where we went right, and we had our problems pointed out by nice, friendly people who didn't laugh at us for failing. And, well, now that I've made two presentations without having a heart attack, I'm sure I won't be as nervous the next time I have to make another.

Speaking of the presentation... I learned some helpful presentation tips from this module. I used to think that longer was better. I thought the slides were supposed to be the main point of the presentation, and the speaker was just there to read them and say anything else that couldn't fit into the slides. Knowing that simplicity is better is definitely going to help me the next time I need to present anything.

I think we also had plenty of practice criticising people in these past weeks. We had to comment on our classmates' work plenty of times, and of course, if we wanted to point out any faults, we had to try to do it in a way that wouldn't make the recipient angry or defensive. I think this also a skill that will be very helpful in the future.

This class was surprisingly fun for a module named "Professional Communication". The word "professional" makes me think of uncomfortable suits and paperwork, so I was expecting a serious, boring class. I'm glad I was wrong. :D

Time to criticise myself. Yay!

Well, I think the presentation went rather well. I think we managed to convey our points to the audience.

Our slides were actually rather simple. Apart from the first slide, which included a picture as a background, we used a plain background for the rest of our slides. We felt that fancy designs can be a bit distracting at times. We did, however, include photographs and screenshots to illustrate the problems we mentioned. I'm sure those pictures helped us explain our points much better than we could have done with words alone.

I felt that our slides contained most of the important information we needed to say, but judging by the amount of questions everyone else had after our presentation... Well, it looks like I was wrong. Hahaha. Still, I don't think we did badly in answering the questions. Most of what they asked were questions we had already considered.

Making suitable eye-contact was difficult, and I don't think I did it well. I realised that I had actually been focusing more on looking at Mr Blackstone's reactions, rather than looking at the whole audience. I suppose the reason is because he's the one grading us, so I was more concerned about his thoughts than about the reactions of all our comrades waiting to interrogate us until we cry.

I had to look back at the slides quite often, but that was mostly because I had to use the laser pointer to draw the audience's attention to specific parts of the example pictures provided. That's not something I can do without looking at the screen. I think, however, that I may have been a bit too rushed showing those examples. Each picture had one important things I wanted to show, and I used the pointer to highlight them while talking about them, but now I think maybe I should have let the audience have a bit more time to look at the rest of the screenshots. Although those other parts aren't really relevant, I think maybe the audience would still have been curious and might have wanted to have a better look.

Overall, I think I didn't do badly, but I realise there are many areas where I still need improvement.