Graduate success attributes (GSA) has taught me a lot of valuable skills that couldn’t be obtained through other subjects. The first attributes that are enhanced by taking this course is communication skills. Communication skills are important for the graduates to master it because it really helps you to prepare for the working environment when you graduated. These skills really taught we on how to communicate with other people. I have evolved from being an introverted person to a person who can start the conversation easily. Although it seems easy to start a conversation, but it requires a good bravery to be able to starts a good conversation with strangers. Activities that require me to interact with my groupmates also encourages me to interact with my group members without being shy to communicate within a team. In my opinion, I have advance further as I be able to give a public speaking to a small crown which is a good effort to evolve myself so that I’m more prepared for my working environment. To achieve my goals, that is to be a representative for the Student Representative Council, it is consider a great improvement for me to be able to withstand the nervous of standing in front of the crowd. However, it does not mean that I can still sit in my comfort zone and not finding opportunity for an improvement. Being able to speak in front of public is just the early step that I have to initiate so that I can withstand a bigger crowd when I’m in the Student Representative Council later on. Communication skills also enhance my team working skills as I have to work in group in certain task. For now, we group members are not interacting that much because we didn’t get to know each other really much. I think in the upcoming task, we will be able get to know much closer and better as we are required to collaborate within a team to be able to finish our end of semester project. Hence, I think that we should take our time to get to know each other before we focusing on the task given by the lecturer. Other than that, I have also learnt on how to tackle the interviewer as a preparation for the job interview after finishing my studies. One of the tips is to be yourself. Being yourself is important as you get interviewed as the interviewer are able to know you better by the first impression of yours. Moreover, being yourself helps you to be more comfortable and not pretending just because you want to impress the interviewer. Another tip is, you should be more confident and take your stand as you answer all the interviewer’s question. This will secure the chance for you to get employed if you are more confident with all your answers. Thus, I think developing communication skills are important for the preparation of working environment.
Next, the skills that I’ve obtained throughout the mid semester is thinking skills. This course had taught me to think before I speak. My classmates were given opportunity to give out their opinions about which skills is the core to all those skills that we going to learn in this course. One of my classmates said that thinking skills is the core to all the other skills that we going to enhance throughout the semester. The ideology of think before you speak were being given by our classmates. In my opinion, the ideology is true, because you got to think before you even speak. For example, the public speaking that we had to give require us to think before we even speak in front of the class. Imagine if we are not well prepared for the public speaking. I’m sure that we won’t be able to speak confidently in front of the class. Hence, I think that think before you speak are important. Most of the conflict happened due to wrong tone of voice. So, you should always think before you even act or speak in order to preserve the friendship or relationship of yours’s. Other than that, this course also taught me to develop my critical thinking skills which are useful and most of the employee are seeking people with good thinking skills so that their workers can help them to solve the problems by the company. To improve critical skills, you have to practice to think outside the box. This means you should not just focus on just your studies. You have to develop your problem-solving skills which often require you to think as many solution u can come up with in order to solve the problems. By doing it so, it will sharpen your critical thinking skills as you have to brainstorm for the solution, which is not an easy task when you are new to problem-solving task. Subjects like discrete structure and programming techniques are examples of course that require me to sharpen my thinking skills as I have to solve the problems.
Secondly, I have also learnt the skills to adapt with my current environment of studies. It is a culture shock for me as I entered university life. The first one is, I get to interact with many international students. There are over seven nationalities in my class which consist of diversity of culture. It is quite hard for me to interact with international as I can’t my English is not that good. But I took it as a challenge and interacted with as many international students as I can. At first, I’m quite shy to start a conversation because I didn’t get to interact with international students before. This is due to I came from Malaysia high school and we rarely get to interact with international students. Thus, I don’t know how to start a conversation with the international students at the beginning of this semester. However, as time goes by, I get the courage to talk with the international students easily. It is a wonderful experience to be able to share about our culture and local dishes to them. I also get to know that Indonesian are allowed to enter universities after they finish their high school life which is different in Malaysia. We have to take pre-universities before we are qualified to enter universities life. The Indonesian save one year because they don’t have to take pre-universities course as they are allowed to continue for diploma or degree life right after their high school life. There are a lot of common culture of Indonesian as our language are quite similar. Hence, we are be able to share our experiences more comfortably as most of the words in Bahasa Melayu are quite similar to their language. Secondly, I’m facing the culture shock of being fully independent as I entered universities life. Although I’ve been into hostel life which require me to be independent, yet that time I’m still seeking for my parents aid to guide me as that time I’m not that rational to think of the best decision to make and have no knowledge on how to handle the registration as my parents are the one who did it for me. However, in university, I have to be independent and handle the registration for my room where I’m currently staying. At first, it is not easy to be fully independent and not asking help from my parents. Without realising, I have accepted the facts that I’m already grown up. Seeking aid from my parents all the time is not a good thing to do. Hence, being independent is the only option that I have so that I’m more prepared for the upcoming events that require me to handle the problems by myself. Lastly, I’m facing the culture shock of getting a lot of assignment and task to be done. It is different compared to pre-universities life where the task and assignment are not that much and the lecturer are more focus on the exercises and revision of the syllabus. So, in my thoughts, I need to change the way I handle assignment and task given. I’m the type of person who loves to postpone my task and assignment to the very last moment. It is not a good thing to do while I’m in university life as there are a lot of assignment and task were given by the lecturer. Not only assignment I have to face, I have also joined a club and were given opportunity to serve as their exco which is the E-Sports club. In order to survive the university life, I have to change my attitude and evolve from being a person who loves to do the last-minute job to the person who finish the task and assignment given as fast as possible. Joining the club of E-Sports also gives me an opportunity to be able to interact with a lot of experienced people from the organisation. The seniors of 2nd year gives a lot of tips on how to handle the events and organize any events that I want to held not just in UTM but also in the state level event that is in Johore. The club are on preparation to held one of the biggest events in UTM that is UTM Arena. This event is being organize due to E-Sport club wants to promote E-sports games such as DOTA 2, Mobile Legends and Player’s Unknown Battle Ground (PUBG) among the students of UTM. E-Sports are well known globally as we humans are evolving our technologies of gadget such as smart phones and computers. But it is quite disappointed that E-Sport in Malaysia are not well known because due to the fact that E-sport players are being prejudice as one of the careers that might not be successful. In preparation for the event, we members of E-Sport club learnt a lot of things. One of them is enhancing my team-communication skills. I have gained a lot of knowledge on how to create a good event, although it is not easy to satisfy the individuals that join the tournaments of E-Sports. I took it as a challenge to be a part of the exco of the events. The mistakes that we made helps us to learnt and do it better and perfectly in the upcoming events. These are also one of the culture shocks that I faced, as I didn’t join any club and participate actively during the pre-universities.
For the next upcoming semester, I think I should more prepare to face challenges and problems that might make me miserable. In my opinion, having a good mental and physical preparation are one of the things that I need to improve for the incoming events. Most of the individuals dropped out of universities because they can’t withstand the pressure of universities life. Hence, getting support from my families and friends are one of the important things that I should obtain to make sure I can survive and face the ups and down of universities life. Moral support is important for all the individuals so that they be able to face tough challenges as families and friends keep giving moral support to them. Although it seems frivolous to give moral support to other people, yet it is proven that by giving moral support shows that you actually care about the person. A simple message of “How was your day?” is one of the ways to show your love to the person. I hope that my families and families always give me moral support and are by myside when I really need them.
Next, I’m really looking forward to improve my soft skills for the next part of the semester. For me, I still think there are a lot for room of improvement that could be done so that I will be able to be different from others. The choice of being different and unique is my ideology. I think that being different and unique is a good attribute that I can develop during my studies in University Technology Malaysia. A good example of being different is the way of thinking of an individual. An individual that can come up with ideas that are unique can secure a job after their studies. Some of the individual with a unique idea is Bill gates. He manages to come up with a good idea that is developing operating software that many of the individuals cannot come up with such idea. Brilliant minds come from experiences, and experiences comes from failure. Hence, I think that fail in couple of things is not a big deal after all because failure is what taught me to be better as I learnt from my mistakes and failure. As the saying goes, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Hence, don’t be afraid to do mistakes. Just be sure to learn from the mistakes that you have done so that it will be lesson and those mistakes won’t be repeated. In my opinion, if I’m afraid to do mistake, I wont learnt from my mistake.
The challenges that I think I’m going to face for the upcoming semester is the struggle to get a good bond between the classmates. It is my goals to make sure that we, as a classmate will get to know each other. In universities life, I have met a lot of new friends and I think that I should preserve the friendship and get to know my classmates closer than before. It is my goals to make we, classmates to treat each other like 2nd family. In order to achieve my goal, I have plan to gather all the classmate to enjoy the evening playing sports in the field. We will enjoy the environment as we have fun together playing frisbee in the field. Other than that, we can also keep a healthy and fit life together as we sweat. These can maintain a better cardiovascular system and we can have our mind be healthier as our body is fit. Although it is not easy to make a bond between our classmates, I want to take it as a challenge to be able to get everyone in our class which consist of multiple races and culture to stay united as we are Malaysian after all.
Lastly, I hope that I will be able to maintain my life as a student in University Technology Malaysia as this universities are unique because there are a lot of international students and the culture of this universities are unique in their own way. I’m looking forward to get more opportunities of improving myself so that I can be a better person in the future. I hope that I will be able to achieve my ultimate goals, that is to be one of the successful graduates of University Technology Malaysia and be able to serve the nation so that our country, Malaysia will be well known globally.