Reflection 2

SCSR is the course code of a computer science course in UTM Johor Bahru, which is the Bachelor of Computer Science (Computer Networks and Security). On 6^th March 2020, the members of SCSR of School of Computing has organized an event called SCSR Family Day at Block N28, School of Computing, UTM Johor Bahru. This event will be held every year and included the participation of all Year 1 until Year 4 SCSR students. Basically, this event will be held on weekends which is the free time of university students. The objective of this event is to gather all SCSR students and provide a chance for them to work together in contributing their effort to their study environment. This is the reason of why this event called SCSR Family Day. In a university, all the students and staff including lecturers in the faculty are considered as a big family as they are learning, working and meet every day at the same place. They are closely related and connected because they are involved in the same specialization of study.

For this year, SCSR Family Day held on Friday which is the weekend of Johor Bahru. There are 2 activities held on SCSR Family Day, which are the spring-cleaning activity at Block N28, School of Computing and Barbeque Night. Spring-cleaning activity will conduct from morning to afternoon, while Barbeque Night will be conducted at night. The purpose of the spring-cleaning activity is to enhance the relationship between the lecturers and students, and to clean up the study environment for ensuring that the students can study and learn in a comfortable and clean environment. Whereas for the Barbeque Night, it is a gathering for the consolation of the efforts contributed to the spring-cleaning activity which conducted in the morning of the same day. It also provided an opportunity for students to engage with their senior students so that they can helping each other in case if they need any help.

Unfortunately, I am absent for the Barbeque Night on the same day because I have to attend another club activity. However, I still participated in the spring-cleaning activity during SCSR Family Day. As an SCSR student from the School of Computing, I wanted to contribute my efforts in the cleaning process of the study environment at the School of Computing. I am assigned to Unit TTK, which is a unit of special duties or tasks. As a committee member of unit special duties, I am assigned to clean the female lecturer’s washing room and paint the wall at Block N28 Level 3. These activities required team working and communication skills as the cleaning process of the study environment involves many people and needs a lot of human effort. Team working allows us to equally distribute the works and complete the works within the period of time. It will result in producing high working efficiency and high working performance. Other than that, well-fine communication is required during the discussion process to prevent the misunderstanding between us, otherwise it cannot prevent the arguments from occurring.

For the task of cleaning the washing room, I work together with other committee members. We are given the cleaning tools to clean the washing room. We distribute the tools and we started to clean the washing room. I cleaned the sinks in the washing room with one of the committee members while the others are responsible to clean and wash the toilet. Since the washing room has not make a deep cleaning for almost one year, there is a lot of dirt in the sinks, so we used strong detergent to clean it. We also clean the mirror in the washing room. The mirror is very important for females as the females use a mirror to check their out looking for maintaining their image in front of people. Besides that, we are provided with a small machine which can import the water from the water pipe and pump out the water at a strong power. It is easier for us to use it for rinsing the washing room because this machine saves our energy on carrying the water to rinse the washing room. There is no need for us to manually carry water using buckets and rinse the washing room. This task is a small challenge for us because we do not really want to clean the washing room at the beginning as we think that the washing room is very dirty. But we still accept this challenge and finished the task of cleaning the female lecturer’s washing room at the end.

After that, we rest for a while and having lunch prepared by our lecturers. Our lunch is fried rice cooked by our lecturers. We feel very appreciative because we did not expect that we have the opportunity to taste and try the food cooked by our lecturers. We are having lunch together with our lecturers. During the time, we discuss many interesting topics with lecturers such as the funny things we have done during the lecture time before. I realized that lecturers are very friendly when they are not teaching in the class. Some of them have also become parents, so they treat us like their kids. I feel very comfortable when staying in such an environment as this is the time I am having with lecturers without assignments and projects. I can relax and chit chat with lecturers casually.

After finishing lunch, we continue the task of painting the wall. For the painting works, I discuss with other committee members and give ideas on how to design and paint the wall. As the result, we decided to paint “Network & Security” words on the wall which represents our SCSR course title. These paint works are difficult especially paint the words on the wall because the words need to adjust and paint one by one to make sure that the painted words will display well and correctly on the wall. This is my first time to do the painting works. It is new for me and I feel interested to participate in the painting process. Before starting to paint, we cut the words on paper. Then we paste the paper on the wall so that it can be easier for us to paint the words on the wall later. During the painting process, we used a ladder to paint the words at a higher position. Teaching and learning process exist during the wall painting as some of us teach others who do not know how to paint. Although I got my clothes dirty with paint, we are having fun. In the end, we are very satisfied with our painting works as the painting ideas have come from us and it is a team achievement.

Teamwork and communication skills are very important in the cleaning and painting process. I need to work together with other committee members in cleaning the washing room and paint the wall. I believe that team working is one of the important aspects to make sure that this activity was successfully organized. Without teamwork, the cleaning process cannot carry out successfully as this activity required a lot of human efforts. Therefore, all the cleaning works have to well divided and distributed to all the committee members so that the duties can finish on time. We also required to help each other when one of us faced difficulties. This is to ensure that all the cleaning works can be done within the time given.

In addition, communication skill is a significant skill in these activities as all of us have to communicate well in order to make sure that we did not misunderstand peoples’ idea, thinking and words. This is very important during the discussion especially we are taking instructions from the lecturers and leaders so that we did not make any mistakes. Furthermore, we need to accept others’ ideas and opinions although we have the opposite opinions with them. We can have a discussion so that everybody can vote for ideas and opinions. In this way, we can make a decision that satisfied by everyone in the team and prevent arguments from occurring.

In conclusion, I gained experiences and great memories with other committee members as we work together in the cleaning and painting process. I also learn a lot after joined these activities. I learn how to use the cleaning and painting tools. I feel challenged when painting the wall because this is the first time I touch the paint tools and learn how to paint. Fortunately, other committee members teach me patiently on how to paint the wall correctly. Additionally, I have developed teamwork and communication skills through these activities. These skills must be developed before joining a career. In the career world nowadays, many companies required teamwork and communication skills as many projects are required a team to work on it to achieve the goals. Hence, we can know how important of these skills in the career world. In university, this is the best time we learned these skills during our learning process because many assignments and projects need to be done in a team. As the result, I am satisfied with my performance in these activities as I am willing to attempt different things and challenge them.