Final reflection on learning

I have learnt many important things from this course. It is so difficult to pick just one to comment on as required by blogging directory. I appreciate every talk, slides, video, and presentation. My friend Dinesh said that he is thankful that es2007 is a core module for engineering student, I cannot agree more. Unlike other modules, I believe everything (literally) I have learnt in this module will benefit me even after graduation. That is why I will write a summary after this post, so that I can come back for revision in the future.

The focus of my development through the course I choose is definitely interpersonal skill. 

Apart from the knowledge, this course also provided great opportunities to interact with different people. This class is formed by different kind of people and each of them is unique. I really appreciate talking to any of my classmates. In this course, we are forced to form teams with different classmates. But the result was unexpected awesome. We practically practiced what we have learnt from the course about interpersonal/intercultural communication.

The group proposal gave us experience working as a team. We have learnt to interact with other team members whom might be from a totally different culture. We had small disagreements often, but because we had the common goal and we tried our best to communicate, everything turned out to be great.

There is this small point Madam Radhika mentioned during class which changed my life. She taught me that the key of interpersonal interaction is to love the person you are talking to. I was so surprise when I heard that.

At the beginning of this course, Madam Radhika asked us what the most important thing in interpersonal communication is. Some people said trust, some people said sympathy, Redonia said humor. My answer to that question is (in business world) both of the parties should have expectation on each other. I believed every conversation should have a purpose (except talking with friends, in which case conversation contains tons of rubbish and usually served no purpose at all).

Actually before this course, I have already realized that there is something wrong with myself. I was the worst ice breaker in the world. I am handicap of starting topics for conversation. I have tried really hard to figure out the reason until I attended that lesson in which I learnt the key of interpersonal communication is to like whom you are talking to. It really changed my world. Uncountable scenes of conversation flashed through my mind and then I realized each time I met someone, I respect them as individual, and that was all. I did not like them (nor hate them, just neutral), therefore I did not try to know them. I did not even try to be friend with them.

I truly believe it is the most important thing that I have learnt from this course. I would like to share it with anyone who is reading this post and hope it will inspire anyone who has similar experience.

I enjoyed every moment with my classmates and Madam Radhika. Thank you.