Help Me Solve This!

It wasn't hard at all, for me, to find an interpersonal conflict to write about. There has been an incident that has been weighing heavily on my mind recently and I think that it would be a great opportunity to gather some suggestions as to how one should go about resolving such a conflict. I think that this is a situation in which many will sooner or later find themselves in, although it might not be in such a setting or to such exaggerated proportions. So, it will be very useful for everyone to pull a couple of suggestions together.

I have a friend who is the President of some CCA in a particular university in Singapore. One night, I received an sms from her telling me that she has been crying every night and she was afraid that she might fall into depression if this kept up. So I called her to try to console her. When I got her on her phone, she was crying hysterically and was hiccupping in between words. This was what she told me, in brief:

Three nights ago, she was in her CCA studio when she saw a group of people in a heated discussion. She went over to try to mediate. They told her that the event her CCA was supposed to be rolling out the very next day was still not completed. This event was not headed by her, but by her Vice-President, who has never taken a liking to her. However, as they were unable to contact the Vice President at that time, my friend decided to step in and lend them a helping hand.

When they were finally able to contact the Vice President, the Vice President became monosyllabic and cold when she learnt that my friend stepped in to help. My friend mentioned that she wanted to explain things to the Vice President but was never given the opportunity to because the Vice President kept ignoring her.
They still have a couple of months in office before handing over to the new committee and my friend says that she doesn’t want to leave things in such a bad state. She says that their relationship now is worse than before (and it was never good to begin with).

How should my friend go about repairing this broken relationship so that their committee can work well before the hand-over?

What Effective Communication Means To Me.

I’ve never thought about what effective communication meant to me. I mean, I can speak and I can hear. How is that ineffective? Do we need another sensory feedback facility? Somehow, throughout my life, I’ve never thought further than my tertiary education. With two more years left in NUS, I guess now is as good a time as any to start thinking about my future. Regardless of whether it lies in graduate school or in the workplace, being able to communicate well with others will definitely help me to progress in life.

I’ve never been much of a group project kind of person, or a presentation kind of person either. I’d very much prefer to work alone compared to working with others. Also, I’d cringe whenever I have to give presentations. These things are such a big deal to me that I avoid modules with projects or presentations at all costs. I think I’ve always worried about the conflicts that might arise due to clashing personalities or group members submitting sub-standard work or even about whether I can get my ideas across to my audience precisely. Wow, reflecting on that, I think I would benefit lots by equipping myself with solid communication skills. Just the ability to share my thoughts more accurately with others as well as the ability to communicate and deal with people better would help me tremendously. I believe that being able to connect well with people, being able to perform well during interviews and being able to write informative and impressive applications will prepare me for the world when I leave school. It would even benefit me when I start on my final year project next year.

This blog post sort of functioned as a platform for self-reflection. I started out (yeah, this whole post took me about 3 hours to type out) not having a clue what effective communication meant to me. Yet now I see that even in school, I need to have a good grasp of communication skills so that tasks like group projects, presentations and SEP application become smooth and painless processes. It’ll be even more important out in the real world (that’s not to say that while in NUS, we’re living in some Sims-like virtual world) when we get to interact with a more diverse group of people—people from different races, backgrounds, religion, social status; I still want to get my message across clearly and I still want to be able to speak and share confidently.