It has been a roller coaster ride from the start of the module till now. There were numerous deadlines to meet, communication processes involved and a learning process for me.
Without a doubt, this has been the most efficient project group that I have been in since the start of my undergraduate studies in National University of Singapore (although I only had two projects thus far). The first one consisted of two project mates, out of which one was horrendously ill disciplined and not meeting deadlines. In the end, the other group mate and myself had to do almost the whole report ourselves. This may seem to happen to almost everyone. After going through the paces in ES2007S, I begin to reflect on what I should have done back then. Maybe I could have spoken to her and let her realise that this is an important task at hand and should not be taken lightly? This is one of the possibilities.
Furthermore, my project mates, Jia Yi and Barry, communicated excellently with me through phone calls, e mails and sms-es. We had trust in each other that we would do our research and write ups. To have trust in each other is essentially crucial in projects. This applies to the corporate world too, where all of us would step into eventually upon graduation.
On top of that, I have learnt to sieve out materials from sources in a much more efficient and constructive way. This is to make sure that the information I get is relevant to the topic that we are working on and to critically evaluate what is being filtered out, so as to provide a better insight to the project.
I have also came across situations whereby e-mails and phone calls were not answered. This has made me more resilient, and to source for information myself. This is critical in my development as a chemist, whereby research work is the crux.
The major problems we faced was the amount of work we had in our hands. Jia Yi and Barry are final year students and their final year projects is their main focus. On my part, I had to deal with my Co-Curricular activities (CCA) on top of my academics. This experience has certainly made me learn how to prioritise better. I had to admit that I was indeed surprised that we could come up with a 20 page report within such a short stipulated time, coupled with all the appendixes, content page and illustrations.
The three of us also supported one another in times of need. There was an instance whereby I had 2 mid term tests in a week and we had to submit the drafts of our findings and interpretations. Jia Yi and Barry understood my situation and we worked as a team to get things done on time. There was also the element of emotional support as all three of us were really overwhelmed by work and felt stressed.
For the oral presentation, I hope that we can keep the team spirit high in us. I also believe that the camaraderie in us should stay with us throughout the module and beyond that. In this way, we will be able to survive and complete the last lap despite all the odds stacked against us.
This experience will certainly be of good use in my life, be it in NUS or in the corporate world. Through working together, I am certain that the three of us will be better team players. This has also forged better friendships among us.
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Hi Binglin! I am so touched with your appreciation for our group! We sure had an enjoyable time working together.
I have experienced doing projects with irresponsible team mates before. I had a terrible experience working with a group member, A, who did not take pride in her work. In the group project for a particular module, my group decided to allocate an easier component of the project to A, while another group member (B) and I worked on a more difficult component of the project, since B and I lived closer to each other and thus easier to meet up for discussion.
I remembered that B and I worked really very hard to complete our allocated tasks and even worked past midnight, thus having to take a taxi home. However, while we slogging to complete our tasks, A sent us her completed "sloppy" work (we checked through and realised it was all copied and pasted from a website) and went shopping! Furthermore, when she was in-charged of collating, she only copied and pasted all the different sections together. We were exasperated by her attitude.
However, we were also at fault, since we did not bother to talk to her about her attitude (all we did were to complain about her behind her back). We were so angry that we did not bother to edit her portion of the project, which resulted in a bad grade for our project. I regretted that we were not assertive in correcting her attitude. We lost trust in our group member and the team spirit was poor in our group, which I felt was important as the group moves toward a common goal of scoring for the project.
From then on, I prefer to work on a project with friends whom I know well about their working attitude. Nevertheless, I am very glad that my working experience has been enjoyable with both of my team mates for this module, whom I have worked with for the first time.
Dear Jiayi,
Many thanks for being so on time with the submission of various write ups so as to allow me to collate the different parts written by Barry, yourself and myself.
It certainly has been the best project work group that I have been in since the start of my NUS life.
All the best for the oral presentation and we can do it!
Binglin
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