A Hopeful Transmission

I can't figure out where the little excerpt that we went through in class on Monday came from. I'm referring to the short paragraph in which the author claimed that communication was an art, not a science. The reason I brought this up is that this exercise got me thinking outside of the main objective of the exercise. Seeing how other classmates had picked up on the debatable nature of the author's opinion made me ponder over why the thought to challenge the author's opinion had not occurred to me at all.


This came just days after I had attended an ethics module for engineering students in which the lecturer lamented that engineers often do not have a mind of their own outside following instructions, to which I responded with violent objections in my head. Of course the ethics lecturer had been talking about things on a much bigger scale such as the implications of blindly following instructions ultimately leading to human casualties but it certainly made me realise the importance of actively thinking on top of following directions. I thought about how long it has been since I've been academically engaged in something that required me to have an opinion and exercise it.


Perhaps the last times would have been a critical writing course for engineers back in year 1 sem 1 and prior to that, GP in JC but come to think of it, even then, there were certain cues that limited the open-endedness of every question from which I could systematically approach a question and tackle it according to a certain format. In short, the little exercise on Monday made me realise how different a module ES2007S is from anything I've done in a long time. No formulae to digest, definitions/laws to memorise. No answer key. No rigidly structured correct answers.

It's a refreshing change but at the same time, in a lot of ways, this module is forcing me to step out of my comfort zone and into somewhere that makes the introvert that I am feel awkward and contrived. Yes, I do have opinions and I do like to share them but the context in which I am comfortable with sharing them is in a one-to-one basis or via a faceless portal (e.g. blogging here now) and so presentations, however brief, freak me out. When I think presentations, I think about my many bad experiences with them. Most presentations are rehearsed in my head from days before the presentation itself but for some reason on the presentation day itself, I manage to spaz out such that I come across as someone who free-rode for the entire project.

However, the fact of the matter is that presentations/interviews/nerve-wrecking situations are part and parcel of working life and so I'm embarking on this journey hoping to improve myself and I know that's going to require me taking the metaphorical bull by its horns. So here goes...