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.