final reflection

I would certainly say that ES2007s is one of the most beneficial modules I had ever taken in NUS. Through the 13 weeks of tutorial, I had gained valuable knowledge in writing proposal, cover letter and resume, preparing for interviews, and conducting oral presentation. 

In the past two years in NUS, I had never written a proposal before as my course of study only focused on report writing. However through the ES2007s project, I had a better understanding in writing a proposal and I believe it would be of great use in my future career. When I graduate, I could be working in a research organization where it might require me to propose research projects to potential investors. Hence, the skills acquired will come in handy.

For cover letter and resume writing, the importance of it in job hunting is needless to mention.  Everyone knows that an impressive cover letter and resume increases your chance significantly in getting a job. This is the same for interviews. The writing assignments and mock interview had not only taught me on how to improve my cover letter writing and interview performance, it also made me ponder on my future career plans. I begin to see the needs for me to build up on my resume so that I would have an edge over my fellow competitors when I start to look for jobs.

Last but not least, the feedbacks that I received from my oral presentation allowed me to be aware of my weaknesses. The mistakes I had made would be a valuable learning lesson and hopefully I will do better for my subsequent presentations.

In all, I feel that this module has gotten me more prepared for my career in the future. It has been my pleasure to learn from brad and everyone else in the class. I would also like to thank Sofie, Zhiwei and Dwayne for all the hard work you guys had put in for the proposal. It was fun working with all of you.

All the best to everyone and good luck for the upcoming finals!

Reflection for oral presentation

Presentations have always been one of my greatest fears in school. However after going through the oral presentation, I have seen improvements in my presentation skills. I am indeed more confident now as compared to the past.

It’s a huge transition for me. Before going though this module, my presentation style would be just reading directly from my cue cards and making occasional eye contact. Now, I am able to present without any notes with me and feel more comfortable making eye contact with my audience.

Certainly, I am still not up to the standard and there are rooms for improvement. Like what brad had mentioned in the final oral presentation, I had to improve on the use of subject verb agreement in my speech and also more importantly to sound natural. I would require more oral presentation practices to improve on these two areas of weakness. Perhaps next time, I should record my own presentation to pinpoint on the mistakes.

Nonetheless, I am grateful to identify my mistakes now so that I can make changes to it in the future. It’s always better to make all the silly mistakes now cause you still have the chance to learn from it and make sure you never make the same one again.

fostering intercultural communication

Culture as we all know is dependent on the environment we grow up and the exposure we experiences. Different individuals with different cultures will react differently to the same situation. I think it is interesting to observe the how people of different culture response. Sometimes, their responses can also be a learning lesson for us.

I have a cousin who had migrated over to New Zealand since she was young. She came back to Singapore last year for vacation and I had to bring her around for sightseeing. The first time I saw her at the airport, she had the Caucasian look even though she is a true Chinese. When she greeted me with a hug, I was actually feeling a little uncomfortable cause I was not close to her at all. In fact, we had not contacted each other for the past ten years.

This is not the only weird moment I had with her. There was another occasion when we took the bus back together and the first thing she did on the bus was to greet the bus driver. It was really nice of her to do that but it was something out of the norm in Singapore and sure enough everyone on the bus starred at her.

It makes me wonder whether we Singaporeans are lacking some social politeness. How many of us will smile or say, “thank you” to the cashiers/servers in a restaurant? I doubt not many of the Singaporeans will do that. Personally, I think that we may have the mentality that those in the service industry are suppose to serve us and we are paying them for the service. Hence, we may have taken their service for granted and neglected about the rules of conduct in a society.

What is your opinion about it?

Cover letter and Resume

COVER LETTER

Michelle Low

Kent Ridge Drive 4,

Singapore 156388

18 February 2013

Dr Lucia Mori

Senior Principal Investigator

Singapore Immunology Network (SIgN)

8A Biomedical Grove, Immunos Building, Level 4

Singapore 138648

Dear Dr Mori,

Application for the position of Research officer, Job ID: BMSI/SIgN/LM/RO/04022013

I am very interested in the Research officer position advertised on the A*STAR webpage and it has prompted me to forward my resume for your perusal. Being an initiative programme under Singapore top biomedical research agency, A*STAR, SigN has attracted around 200 scientists from all over the world to work under renowned principal investigators in human immunology research. Hence, it will be of great honor to work under top principal investigators in the world and I believe my acquired knowledge and experience can contribute their current research.

I will be graduating in 2014 from National University of Singapore with a Bachelor of Science in Life Science (Hons.) with specialization in Biomedical Science.  Furthermore, I have graduated from Ngee Ann polytechnic with a diploma in Biomedical Science. With both a honours degree and diploma certificate, I have an edge over the rest of the graduates as I had two Final Year Projects opportunities. These experiences provided me a chance to work with different supervisors and receive prompt feedback that allows me to hone my experimental techniques. In addition, I had taken several modules relevant to the job scopes of this position. In particular, I had read and aced in Immunology for my diploma and Experimental Microbiology for my degree. During the course of Immunology, I conducted an experiment that involved the fusion of mice spleen cells with myeloma cells using PEG method. This practical enabled me to practice on basic cell culturing techniques and acquired skills in the handling and immunization of mice. In Experimental Microbiology, I acquired knowledge on the fundamental skills in aseptic techniques and different biochemical testing which are essential for any scientific experiments.

In addition, I have internship experience at the Centre of Innovation in Environmental & Water Technology where I developed methodology for a research study and conducted experimental testing that include cell culturing and ELISA. My work had later laid the foundation for subsequent interns to continue with the research. Through this valuable experience, I had learnt to plan, conduct and analyze experiments independently as well as to troubleshoot protocols. All these skills are of relevant for a research officer.

With my laboratory experience and a self-driven attitude, I hope to be able to contribute to your company.  Enclosed within is a copy of my resume. I would like very much to meet with you to discuss further about this position.  You can contact me at 12345678.  Thank you for your kind attention and have a pleasant day!

Yours sincerely,

Michelle Low

interpersonal conflict

Interpersonal conflict refers to disagreement that occurs when two or more individuals who must work together fail to agree to the same matter. In the work sector, this is common as each of us have our own unique views to certain issues and we also have different goals or interests. But how about with your close friends and family? Do you think interpersonal conflict do present even though you knew one another very well? 

I believe that interpersonal conflict can happen to anyone even with people whom you are close with. 

I once had a very close friend in secondary school. Due to our common interest and similar personality, we cliqued instantly and became best friends for many years. However, our friendship fell apart. In our final year, I was appointed as the platoon commander for my CCA and was in charge in training my CCA mates for the marching parade. It was of great honor for me as it showed me that my officers believed that I had the ability to be a leader. However, my friend doubted that I am up for the role . If I made a mistake during training, she would smirk and challenge my authority. On the other hand if she was the one who made the mistake, she would be piss off when I pointed it out. Because of our different roles in the CCA,  we often had conflict over such issues and our friendship slowly drifted apart. It was hard to manage the two conflicting roles which is being a leader and a friend at the same time. As a leader, I need to be fair to everyone but as a friend I have to consider the feelings of my friend. 

Our friendship finally broke down when I caught her attempting to pull down the morale of the entire group during training. It was the last straw. I felt that she did not give me the respect I needed as a leader and she was influencing the others to follow her suit. 

After so many years, we still had not resolved the problem in our broken friendship but we no longer hate each other. We are more like 'hi-bye' friends now. As I look back now, I wonder if things would have been different if I had talked to her directly about our issues. 

Do you think I should talk to her about it after so many years or should I just let bygones be bygones?

Why is effective communication skills important?

I feel that communication is an indispensible tool wherever we go. As long as you have to work with people , you need the skill.For instance, I often have project assignments in school that required me to work with people whom I have not work with or even spoken to before.  Effective communication skill in this case is important. How can I phase my words in a way  that doesn't make me sound bossy when I am trying to assign the tasks to my group mates? Or when I disagree with my group mate's idea, how do I share my views without sounding insensitive but still unambiguously?  Communication is not just simply to say what we want to say. We need to be conscious of our tone and the words we  use  need to be sensitive and appropriate to the situation. This is always my concern as I often fear that I might be too direct and may make hurtful comments unintentionally. 

Another reason is that I feel that my presentation skill needs improvements. My area of weakness is my lack of confidence and poor interaction with the audience. During presentations , I often feel tense and worried that I will forget what I am suppose to say thus this affect the fluency of my speech. Furthermore, due to my nervousness, I wasn't  able to make my presentation more interactive and interesting to the audience.My presentation style is more of reading out loud about the information that I researched.  Hence, I hope that I can master the skill of having effective communication through the es2007s.