Final Reflection

As the semester draws to a close, a mental review of my past 12 weeks in this course showed that I've learned a great deal of useful skills. From the first lesson on communication models and active listening techniques to the last lessons on crafting business proposals and oral presentations, all of them have been immensely engaging, informative and relevant.

I want to give special mention of my experience of the lessons on job interview techniques. When I first took this module, I was aware that my interview skills were sorely lacking for various reasons, not least of all the lack of practice and the lack of heart. My resume and cover letter were amateur efforts, and I never gave much thought to my repertoire of cliche question responses. After all the peer teaching sessions, lessons, blog posts, submissions and peer reviews of my cover letter and resume, I am glad to have emerged with  respectable application documents. The mock interview sessions put me in the hot-seat and let me see the interview from HR's point of view.

After this series of lessons, I am more prepared than ever for future interviews, and what helped me the most was the peer feedback process. Having multiple people critiquing your work and giving honest feedback is an amazingly effective filter. When it was my turn to take a critical eye to the work of others, often that review process also gave me unexpected insights. My greatest difficulty was moving beyond the basic 7 'C's in my writing and expressing my personal branding. I also had to do a lot of backpedaling and rationalizing during my mock interview, because my diverse experiences are not relevant to the sector I applied for. I'm not sure if I put my best foot forward during the mock interview, but at least I learned my lesson and now I am more prepared to face a real HR panel.

That was merely my experience of the job interview series of lessons. A thorough treatment and reflection of my experience with the other parts of the module will not fit in a blog post. This has really been the most useful course in my academic life. Having said that, I need to remind myself of the importance of continual revision and improvement. These last 12 weeks, while productive, could only bring me so far. Now, the rest is up to me. Brad told us at the very beginning that how much we took out of this module depended on how much we put in; this actually rings true for any life skill. Now that I've been given these communication tools, I owe it to myself to continuously maintain and refine them.

I am really grateful
to my classmates, whose contributions in-class and out-of-class have spurred my learning,
and to Brad, for the dedicated guidance and heartwarming encouragement along the way.

Everyone in the class is an industrious and illustrious character, and I look forward to the day when our paths cross again in the future(hopefully not in front of the same interview panel nor across an interview table).

Thank you for reading and for being with me through my learning journey, I am glad to have been part of yours.

EDIT: This remains the most value-for-money course I have ever bidded for, 1 Programme point for an amazing experience. I don't understand why the rest of you all spent so many points! Wasn't it underbidded in 1A?