Critical Self-Reflection

Summer Semester has ended, and COM150 along with it. But before it fully finishes, I need to make one final blog post detailing what I had learned over the course of the entire module.

At the beginning of the module, I detailed what I felt I understood about myself, my weaknesses, and where I can improve further on them. I also detailed what my objectives for the overall module were. For the most part, I acknowledged my biggest fault was my lack of tact and social awareness, and aimed to improve on that. My other objective was to gain a better understanding of human psychology and behavior.

Over the course of the past few months, I feel as though I’ve made significant progress towards these goals. From the various lessons, I’ve learned about various theories which have provided me with a greater understanding of both myself and others, and have subsequently taken active steps to improve myself. Emotional intelligence and management are the key, as from there, I had come to realize the biggest reason why I make bad initial impressions is because I get easily excited. This can be rather overbearing for some people. From both the lessons and our project work researching emotional management, I have come to a better understanding of how emotional expression affects the way people perceive each other. From that, I have also learned how to handle my own personal emotions, which will help stop me from acting out in future.

Regarding human psychology, I felt as if I had learned a lot from the module about it. Through topics such as how languages differ between cultures, non-verbal communications and what they imply, as well as learning how people perceive others, I feel as though I have gained a better understanding of how the human mind works. To me, this has made many parts of the module very interesting to study. I will also aim to apply what I have learned about human behavior into my interactions with others in future, so that I can gain a better understanding of people’s actions and what they imply.

Concerning the project, I think I’ve gained a better understanding of how to work with others. While public speaking, making scripts and handling presentations is nothing new to me, this is one of the first times I’ve done it with a team. And I must admit it has not been a pleasant experience. I’ve gotten so used to my regular standard of writing that I’d forgotten that most other people weren’t as good. I was in charge of script and speaking, so when I went to edit everyone’s scripts I was quite appalled to find they were either written purely in bullet point form, were filled with broken vocabulary/grammar, or lacked any sort of cohesion. It took an unexpected amount of effort to fix up many of my teammates scripts and ensure their speeches were well-coordinated. However, there are many things which I were unable to help with, such as the animation video. I lacked any skill with film making or videos in general, which left me completely helpless at doing anything for the video. I was unable to do anything for it at all, and instead had to rely completely on another one of my teammates for it.

What I learned from this experience with the project is the importance of working as a team. Ultimately, people come from different backgrounds and have a variety of skill sets, which means that some are naturally better at certain things than others. Working effectively as a team means identifying each other’s respective strengths and weaknesses, and delegating tasks in a fashion which takes advantage of these strengths while minimizing these weaknesses. The optimal idea is to have team members cover for one another, and have one carry out tasks which others cannot and vice-versa. If that is done, a team will perform at its best, since everyone is doing what they are most specialized in, minimizing the amount of inefficiency while maximizing the quality. As I was busy fixing scripts while another team mate worked on the animation, I was reminded of this, and realized why we had to group up in teams to tackle a research project like this.

Overall, these are what I have learned from the program, and are what I intend to take away. Not only have I obtained knowledge on human psychology/behavior, but I have also taken steps to implement this knowledge towards improving myself, ensuring I cause fewer misunderstandings and poor impressions in future. From the research project, I have also learned first-hand about the advantages and disadvantages in working in teams, as well as how to lead groups to obtain maximum effectiveness. By identifying each member’s skills, a leader can maximize his team by delegating work appropriately and having team members rely on each other. Doing so allows team members to specialize, resulting in high quality work. From these lessons, I hope to perform well in my future endeavors, both in a school and a workplace setting.

Written on: 13/8/2017

– Merville Sin