Critical Reflection on Peer and Tutor Feedback

I believe each of us is unique. Besides attempting to follow the “perfect models” shown during the lesson, we should prosper with uniqueness of ourselves to create our varieties in life. “Variety is the spice of life” as mentioned by my lecturer, Brad, has highlighted the especially important role of variety played in communication modules. The uniqueness can be achieved by the obtaining feedbacks from tutors and peers instead. This is especially true for my oral presentation.

According to Brad, Haiqing, and Fan, (2015), the meaningless gestures, random body movements, tense facial expression and fast speaking speed of me, due to my nervousness, were also some of the critical distraction for them to have a satisfying experience during my presentation. Although I tried to utilise the power of gestures to guide the audiences through the presentation, the effect of stage fear caused me to mess up my gestures. Moreover, my meaningless movements as the common sign of my nervousness might have misled the audiences during the presentation. Most seriously, my tense face might have deprived my audiences of having a pleasant experience from the presentation. Furthermore, the lack of fluency and accuracy of my words as well as the lack of clarity of my sentences due to the inadequate preparation created a challenge for my audiences to understand my points as fed back by Fan (2015).

Fortunately, it is never too late to learn my mistakes now since I need to have a lot of presentations to sell your ideas in study and work as mentioned by my lecturer. Since the inadequate preparation for the presentation reflects “practicing makes perfect”, I should contribute more effort in practicing. This does not mean compromising my time on other modules. Instead, I should practice smartly by distributing more time of the given limited time for practicing formally in front of groupmates and friends to gather their views and feedbacks. From the feedback of my presentation, I understand that the reason of my audiences for failing to get the best experiences of my presentation is not that I was not charming or my ideas were not brilliant. I believe eye contacts and facial expressions played a part in people’s perception of my performance. According to Farnam (2015), eye contact is important to show the honesty, charms and intelligence of a person. On the other hand, as the goal of “self-presentation”, facial expression is utilized by humans to increase the accuracy what they want to show (Schmidt & Cohn, 2001). As a result, I should always remind myself to treat my audiences like engaging with my friends by maintaining eye contacts and facial impressions that can coordinate with my information during the practices of the my presentation until such engagements can be performed subconsciously. Talking about the “freight or flight”, controlling my nervousness and calming myself down are the keys. Measures including reaching the venue of my presentation 10 minutes earlier, setting up the visualizers and laptop as early as possible must be adapted to give myself more time to calm down before the presentation starts in the future. Besides taking measures on the day of presentation, I should also have more practices so that I can get used to the embarrassment and the process of presentations, which is suggested by Calm Clinic, (n.d.). Most fundamentally, sleeping well the day before the presentation must be ensured. Furthermore, I should believe in myself in being able to give the audiences the best experiences so that I can do what I can imagine to do to succeed in the presentation (Taylor, 2011). Believing yourself is similar to doing the “superman” pose before the presentation as encouraged by Brad,which can enable yourself to at least perform with less interference of nervousness. Moreover, group practicing should be carried out more frequently. Such practices can allow other members of the group to understand each other’s slides better and most essentially, enhance teamwork.

Notwithstanding the huge improvement I can do for the future presentation, I should retain some of the strength of showing my enthusiasm and passion with informative slides and deep understanding as praised by Fan (2015) and Goh (2015). Fuelled by the approval of my lecturer and peers, I was able to raise my enthusiasm and passion from the joy of studying the module for the presentation. Excelled with the help and feedback of my lecturer and peers, I was able to work hard with my team to make the presentation informative for the audiences. Hence, I should keep what I learnt from my lecturer and keep my joy, enthusiasm and hard work for every single presentation in the future. 

On the other hand, I am determined to utilise the power of the peer and tutor feedback in field not only on the field of presentations. Feedback is always useful in knowing one's self in many ways. A higher amount of feedback obtained is like a statistic of one's self in the eyes of the public. Therefore, I am able to be more careful on my own work and life to achieve a better quality, based on the previous feedback. I am able to ask myself why I should ask some many questions during interviews. 
--------"Are these interview questions relevant to what I need?"

Fig.1 - Best demonstration of my art of messiness in secondary school

I am able to question myself the presentability of my work.
--------"Does it look messy to my boss?" These are some true examples based on the feedbacks of people on my irrelevant answer for questions, the messiness of my work. Furthermore, the feedback process done in the module allows me to place more attention on others' words and more respects to others' opinions. After all, people are to give you feedbacks for sake of you to improve yourself. As a result, I am more proactive to think about others' opinions with greater focus on the positive outcomes based on the opinions, rather than being stubborn and facing the failures as a result. For instance, I am able to think critically why my fencing coach scolds me when I am too lazy or tired to warm myself up before engaging in fencing. Instead of feeling the coach disliking me, I should understand my coach is trying to reduce the risk of injury of me during the match. You may not think rationally if you are controlled by your negative emotion rather than you controlling your emotion.

Besides feeling grateful for having opportunities to improve myself with the feedbacks from my tutor and peers, I should continue to make use of the power of the feedbacking system to achieve many more goals in my life. Let me improve myself in the journey of life through learning from the feedbacks, unlearning the wrong practices done and relearning my strengt appreciated by others!

References

Calm Clinic. (n.d.). How to overcome nervousness. Retrieved December 3, 2015 from http://www.calmclinic.com/anxiety/overcoming-nervousness

Fan, R. (2015). SIE2016/PEV2011 _ Oral presentation evaluation form. Singapore Institute of Technology. Retrieved December 3, 2015 from https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TcIEJWC4aquDfPnhdeMRlj-uHruL8iWH2EB4xy7xd_g/edit

Farnam, A. A. (2015). Do blind people make facial expressions like sighted people? Quora. Retrieved December 3, 2015 from https://www.quora.com/Do-blind-people-make-facial-expressions-like-sighted-people

Goh, P. Y. (2015). SIE2016/PEV2011 _ Oral presentation evaluation form. Singapore Institute of Technology. Retrieved December 3, 2015 from https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WIsMwOnM-vVEXG9GgD7Mbw7VetxcIibf0Lqy5OuIY4M/edit?usp=drive_web

Panic Disorder, (n.d.). What is the fight or flight syndrome? Retrieved December 3, 2015 from http://www.panicrecoverycenter.com/fight.html

Schmidt, K. L. & Cohn, J. F. (2001). Human facial expressions as adaptations: evolutionary questions in facial expression research. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Suppl 33, 3-24. Retrieved December 3, 2015 from http://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.2001

Taylor, M. (2011). 6 ways to destroy nervousness. PickTheBrain. Retrieved December 3, 2015 from http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/6-ways-to-destroy-nervousness/

Reader Response Draft 4

Iburch (2015) suggested in "Pharmaceutical Disposal" that to prevent contamination of water sources due to "common” pharmaceutical disposal which causes health problems to lives, legislation is helpful. Iburch claims flushing of medications is common and drugs are detected in the water resources of New York State and Connecticut. Studies support his idea by detecting drugs in 80% of water sources tested by an organisation called USGS. Iburch notes water treatment plants cannot filter out the medications. These medications affect aquatic life, especially the amphibians. He mentions studies showing a spawning problem and a drop of fertility in aquatic lives caused by the medications. Iburch believes that to prevent such contamination, safe and convenient medication disposal is the key. Laws such as the Secure and Responsible Drug Disposal Act, which promotes “drug take-back”, have been passed and ways are provided to dispose the drugs safely. However, the causes he listed for the problem are not comprehensive. Furthermore, his claim of an effect of the medication on aquatic life lacks direct evidence to support the validity.

Iburch’s argument is not comprehensive when he talks about the ways to solve the contamination of pharmaceuticals in water. The recommendation of not to flush the pharmaceuticals into the toilet and legislation are the possible ways. However, Iburch does not discuss about the root cause of the problem. For instance, pharmaceuticals may not be used because people purchase them in large amounts unnecessarily. Just to talk about flushing and providing ways for safe disposal are not enough for this situation. Sealing the bags containing pharmaceutical wastes as suggested by scientists from Harvard Medical School (2011) also means that the bags that are not sealed may cause the same problem of contamination even if the pharmaceuticals are not disposed into the water. Furthermore, pharmaceuticals for external application or in skincare products and perfumes (Harvard Medical School, 2011) may be used. These pharmaceuticals may be washed away from the skins, ending up as the contaminants in water. In addition, they are also secreted through human skins or with human waste into the water (Fallik, 2013). In these situations, not to flush the pharmaceuticals into the toilet or legislation for “drug take-back” is not constructive. Therefore, the lack of analysis of the root causes in such a contamination problem fails to give the readers a complete picture of the problem. This makes the argument misleading.

In addition, the data used to show the negative consequences of the pharmaceutical contaminations to the aquatic life is not convincing enough. As suggested by Eisenstadt (2005), the abnormality of the aquatic life can be affected by “weather changes, other chemicals present in the water, temperature fluctuations, and a host of other variables” in an environment without high control. Thus, without data that can show the direct relationship between pharmaceutical contamination and aquatic life, the argument of the author on the water contamination problem is weak.

In sum, despite using data to build the link on how pharmaceutical contaminants are caused and cause other problems, the author should demonstrate a more comprehensive analysis to show the root causes of the pharmaceutical contamination and try to show data demonstrating a more proportional and convincing relationship between the contamination and the environment. However, regardless of whether pharmaceutical disposal practice is a way for such water contamination, the contamination in the water sources is an existing and proven problem.

References

Eisenstadt L. (2005). Drugs in the water. Triplepoint. Retrieved October 1, 2015, from http://www.bu.edu/sjmag/scimag2005/features/drugsinwater.htm

Iburch (2013). This New study found more drugs in our drinking water than anybody knew and no one's doing anything about it. The New Republic. Retrieved October 1, 2015, from http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115883/drugs-drinking-water-new-epa-study-finds-more-we-knew

 

Harvard Medical School. (2011). Drugs in the water. Retrieved October 1, 2015, from http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/drugs-in-the-water

Iburch. (2015). Pharmaceutical disposal. Citizens campaign for the Environment. Retrieved October 1, 2015, from http://www.citizenscampaign.org/campaigns/pharmaceutical-disposal.asp

Face the wall and do oral presentation reflection!

It had been a difficult day to go through the process of preparation of the presentation. Fortunately, I made it this week. Nevertheless, I had not given the best experience to my audiences.

I forgot to maintain eye contacts with my audiences until my presentation was done halfway. The audiences might have lost their interest and focus on my presentation due to the insufficient engagement of eye contacts. My nervousness and inadequate preparation for the presentation played an important role in causing the problem of eye contacts. Similarly, my meaningless gestures, fast speaking speed and random body movement are also the consequences of nervousness and inadequate preparation. I might have mislead my audiences with wrong gestures and movements during the presentation. In addition, the inadequate preparation for the presentation also deprived my groupmate in coordinating the presentation slide with my verbal presentation. The audiences might have failed to understand my points due to the wrong slides shown.

To cope with the problems, I have planned to make changes to my future presentation preparation. If nervousness is one of the greatest enemy of me, calming myself down must be achieved before my presentations start. Measure includes reaching the presentation venues 10 minutes earlier, setting up the visualizers and laptop as early as possible, as the measure gives myself more time to calm down before the presentation starts. Furthermore, I should believe in myself in being able to give the audiences the best experiences. Believing yourself is similar to doing the “superman” pose before the presentation, which can enable yourself to at least perform with less interference of nervousness. Moreover, group practicing should be carried out more frequently. Such practice can allow other members of the group to understand each other’s slides better. We are able to know which words or sentences coordinate with which slides so that any of us can control the slides during the presentation well.

However, notwithstanding the great need for improvement, I can say that I enjoyed the presentation with my passion and enthusiasm. I believe my enthusiasm brought joy to the audiences. This is indeed the objective of my presentation. I should retain my enthusiasm to make every further presentation a successful and fun one!

Reader Response Draft 3

Iburch (2015) suggested in "Pharmaceutical Disposal" that to prevent contamination of water sources due to "common” pharmaceutical disposal which causes health problems to lives, legislation is helpful. Iburch claims flushing of medications is common and drugs are detected in the water resources. Studies support his idea by detecting drugs in 80% of water sources tested by an organisation called USGS. Iburch notes water treatment plants cannot filter out the medications. These medications affect aquatic life, especially the amphibians. He mentions studies showing spawning problem and drop of fertility in aquatic lives caused by the medications. Iburch believes that to prevent such contaminations, safe and convenient medication disposal is the key. Laws, such as Secure and Responsible Drug Disposal Act which promotes “drug take-back”, have been passed and ways are provided to dispose the drugs safely. However, the causes he listed for the problem are not comprehensive. Furthermore, his claim of effect of the medication on aquatic life lacks direct evidence to support the validity.

Ibruch’s argument is not comprehensive when he talks about the ways to solve the contamination of pharmaceuticals in water. The recommendation of not to flush the pharmaceuticals into the toilet and legislation are the possible ways. However, Ibruch does not discuss about the root causes of the problem. For instance, pharmaceuticals may not be used because people purchase them in large amounts unnecessarily. Just to talk about flushing and providing ways for safe disposal are not enough for this situation. Sealing the bags containing pharmaceutical wastes as suggested by scientists from Harvard Medical School (2011) also means that the bags that are not sealed may cause the same contamination problem even if the pharmaceuticals are not disposed into the water. Furthermore, pharmaceuticals for external application or in skincare products and perfumes (Harvard Medical School, 2011) may be used. These pharmaceuticals may be washed away from the skin, ending up as the contaminants in water. In addition, they are also secreted through human skins or with human waste into the water (Fallik, D., 2013). In these situations, not to flush the pharmaceuticals into the toilet or legislation for “drug take-back” is not constructive. Therefore, the lack of analysis of the root causes in such contamination problem fails to give the readers a complete picture of the problem. This makes the argument misleading.

In addition, the data used to show the negative consequences of the pharmaceutical contaminations to the aquatic life is not convincing enough. As suggested by  Eisenstadt L. (2005), the abnormality of the aquatic life can be affected by “weather changes, other chemicals present in the water, temperature fluctuations, and a host of other variables” in an environment without high control. Thus, without data that can show the direct relationship between pharmaceutical contamination and aquatic life, the argument of the author on the water contamination problem is weak.

In sum, despite using data to build the link on how pharmaceutical contaminants are caused and cause other problems, the author should demonstrate a more comprehensive analysis to show the root causes of the pharmaceutical contamination and try to show data demonstrating a more proportional and convincing relationship between the contamination and the environment. However, regardless of whether pharmaceutical disposal practice is a way for such water contamination, the contamination in the water sources is an existing and proven problem.

References

Fallik, D. (2013). This New study found more drugs in our drinking water than anybody knew and no one's doing anything about it. The New Republic. Retrieved October 1, 2015, from http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115883/drugs-drinking-water-new-epa-study-finds-more-we-knew


Harvard Medical School. (2011). Drugs in the water. Retrieved October 1, 2015, from http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/drugs-in-the-water


Eisenstadt L. (2005). Drugs in the water. Triplepoint. Retrieved October 1, 2015, from http://www.bu.edu/sjmag/scimag2005/features/drugsinwater.htm

Iburch. (2015). Pharmaceutical disposal. Citizens campaign for the Environment. Retrieved October 1, 2015, from http://www.citizenscampaign.org/campaigns/pharmaceutical-disposal.asp

Draft 2 great reader e-response

Lburch (2015) alleged in "Pharmaceutical Disposal" that legislation can help to prevent contamination of water sources by "common” pharmaceutical disposal which causes health problems to lives. Lburch claims Flushing of medications is common. Drugs are detected in the water resources. Studies support his idea by detecting drugs in 80% of water sources. Lburch notes water treatment plants cannot filter out the medications. These medications affect aquatic life, especially the amphibians. He mentions studies showing spawning problem and drop of fertility caused by the meditations. Lburch believes, to prevent such contaminations, safe and convenient medication disposal is the key. Laws, such as Secure and Responsible Drug Disposal Act, were passed and ways are provided and promoted dispose the drugs safely. However, the causes he listed for the problem is not adequately comprehensive. Furthermore, part of his claim lacks direct evidence to support the reliability.

Lbruch’s argument is not comprehensive when he talks about the ways to solve the contamination of pharmaceuticals in water. Not to flush the pharmaceuticals into the toilet and legislation are the possible ways. However, Lbruch does not discuss about the root cause of the problem. Pharmaceuticals may not be used because people purchase them in large amounts unnecessarily. Just talk about flushing here or providing ways for safe disposal are not enough for this situation. Sealing the bags containing pharmaceutical wastes as suggested by Harvard University (2015) also suggests that the bags that are not sealed may cause the same contamination problem even if the pharmaceuticals are not disposed into the water. Furthermore, pharmaceuticals, for external application or in skincare products and perfumes (Harvard University, 2015) , may be used, but they are secreted through human skins or with human waste into the water, too (D. Fallik, 2013). In these situations, not to flush the pharmaceuticals into the toilet or legislation is not practical. Therefore, the lack of analysis of the root causes in such contamination problem fails to give the readers a complete picture of the problem. This makes the argument misleading.

In addition, the data used to show the negative consequences of the pharmaceutical contaminations to the aquatic life is not convincing enough. As suggested by L. Eisenstadt (2005), the abnormality of the aquatic life can be affected by “weather changes, other chemicals present in the water, temperature fluctuations, and a host of other variables”, in an environment without high control. Thus, without data that can show the direct relationship between pharmaceutical contamination and aquatic life, it renders the impact of how people react to the consequence of the contaminations.

Summarily, despite using data to build the link on how pharmaceutical contaminations is caused and causes other problems, the author should show a more comprehensive analysis to show the root causes of the pharmaceutical contaminations and try to show data demonstrating a more proportional and convincing relationship between the contaminations and the environment. However, no matter pharmaceutical disposal practice is a way for such water contaminations, the contaminations in the water sources are a truly existing and proven problem for people to worry about.

References

Lburch (2015, March 4). PHARMACEUTICAL DISPOSAL

 . Retrieved from http://www.citizenscampaign.org/campaigns/pharmaceutical-disposal.asp

Harvard University (2015). Drugs in the water

 

 . Retrieved from http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/drugs-in-the-water

Lburch (2015, March 4). PHARMACEUTICAL DISPOSAL

 . Retrieved from http://www.citizenscampaign.org/campaigns/pharmaceutical-disposal.asp

D. Fallik (2013). This New Study Found More Drugs in Our Drinking Water Than Anybody Knew And no one's doing anything about it . Retrieved from http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115883/drugs-drinking-water-new-epa-study-finds-more-we-knew

Lay Jeon Hin's great article take 1!

Several years ago, my parents gave me the opportunity to study in Singapore. They are still waiting with hope that I can develop wider visions and better communication skills in an environment where English language skills are vital. However, I did not cherish the opportunity. In secondary school, I chose to speak to speak Mandarin rather than English to make my life easier and more comfortable. Of course, that also made my academic life a tough one, especially when preparing for O-level. Unfortunately, I still refused to pay attention to the problem, until the day I went for an interview of internship opportunity to Oxford University. Of the three candidates, I was the only deprived of the opportunity! The confusion shown by the interviewer from the university already suggested that he failed to understand my English before I left the interview room! Yes, with consideration of my silliness, I would never ever work inside the university again after losing this opportunity to others! I just lost to others on the skill of communication! I did not value English adequately in term of speaking. That is why my friend, who read English story books and watched SBC (Scottish Broadcast Channel) and MTV Asia everyday, received good results and ended up studying in National University of Singapore, oh my god! After the interview, I finally stepped up to salvage my English! I commenced to communicate in English with others, even during the time of talking claps. I switched my phone setting to English. I watched Channel 5 rather than channel 8.

Due to my effort, I have made the life of my lecturers easier since nowadays they save a lot of effort in understanding me! Perhaps what I need to do in the future is to make English story books interesting to me which is a challenging task!

Editted 16.9.2015

people are now thinking of a different line. they realise that they cant avoid the responsibility to create a way of substanable development.