1. Introduction

The last few days before the Conditional Movement Control Order (CMCO) was being announced by the Prime Minister of Malaysia, I managed to join one of the programs that was organized by the Computer Graphics and Multimedia Association (CGMA) named Boxtroll 2020. This program was held on 7 March 2020, the second semester of 2019/2020 session at DK4 of P19 building in UTM.  I am one of the committee members for this program and the role that I held was as the Assistant Secretary. Basically, the purpose of this program is to hold a sharing session between the fourth-year seniors with all the juniors about their journey throughout their internship. Because of that, this program will be held in the second semester of every academic session. It is because all the seniors had finished their internship during that period. Furthermore, this program also allow all the participants to share any experiences and ideas with each other as they will be a random group session that will mix all the students from each year.

Figure 1: The committee members of Boxtroll'20

2.Reporting

The activities that was held throughout the day were sharing session, group activity, presentation and question and answer session. Sharing session is basically the seniors were sharing their internship experiences with the juniors. They will be around 4-5 representative from the fourth-year students to share their experiences. As I was one of the committee members, I need to came to the gather venue as early as 7.30 A.M to helps the other committee members in managing the students. The program starts with registration of the participants. Then, all the participants including the committee members having their breakfast before the program started. At around 8.30 A.M, the program started with the singing of National Anthem and Keunggulan Terbilang songs. Then, it started with the sharing session by the representative from fourth-year students about their experiences throughout their internship. They were a lot of good advices and interesting experiences that we got from our seniors.

Figure 2: Sharing session by senior

After that, the program proceed by having the group activities within the participants and also the committee members. The group activity was started by dividing the groups between the participants and the committee members were the facilitators that were assigned to guide all the participants and helps them in finishing their task. I was one of the facilitators as I am part of the committee members.  However, I also need to help the participants by giving them some ideas to finish their task. This group activity require them to make a prototype by only using the tools that was provided. Then, the program was proceed with the presentations by the representative of every group regarding the product or prototype that they had done. There are several theme for the product creation and every theme had one winner for the best product.

Figure 3: Presentation session and example of the product made by participants

As soon as the presentation ended, all the participants including the committee members were voting for the best product. Then, after the voting session had ended, the program proceed with some refreshing activities to make all the participants fresh again after working so hard from the morning. After the refreshing activities ended, we open for the questions and answers session with a few representative from fourth-year students. If anyone had some questions to be asked, they need to write the question and put it in a box and the fourth-year students will randomly take the questions from the box and answer it immediately to all the audiences.

Figure 4: Question and Answer Session

Last but not least, we were finally moving towards the end of the program. The program was ended with the closing ceremony and gift ceremony for the VIPs and the winners of group activities. This program was very fun yet full of inspirational sharing by all the seniors. There are many things that I myself could get from this program.

Figure 9: Group photo at the end of the program

3.Responding 

Throughout this one whole day program, I had such a valuable time that I could not get elsewhere. I got involved in every progress of the program. From before the program, while the program is running and after the program had finished, I got to witness how the program is going on throughout the process. Get to know with many people from different batches made me learned many new things and experiences. Because of that, I am very sure that it will helps me to be more ready for any obstacles coming to me in the future by adjusting myself with the experiences that I got especially from the seniors. The challenges that my team and I were facing in the preparation of the programs had teach me a lot in handling my problems properly. For example, we had one problem a week before the program where the place that we plan to held the program suddenly got cancel due to some reason. During the meeting, we discussed among the committee members on how to solve the problems by giving out our ideas. I saw the director of the program didn’t hesitate in solving the problem. It really teach me to face any problem that we have calmly and try to find the best solution to solve it.

Overall, this program has left a big impact to me as a student especially all the experiences that my seniors had shared to me. I found that it is very useful for me. I believe if this kind of program didn’t exist, it may be a bit difficult to get an opportunity to have a sharing session with the seniors.

4. Relating 

Personally, the graduate attitude that impacted me are thinking skills and communication skills that I lack before I joined the program. I am an introvert person and has a very small circle of friends around me. Truthfully, I found that this program helps me a lot in overcoming that dark side of me. I amazingly became a friendly person as I have to communicate well with all my team members in the group activities and surprisingly they were all get along easily with me. Furthermore, I also found out that I can critically think for the solution of the problems that we had to solve in a short amount of time. Although it may not be the best solution, but still I can give a brief idea for my team mates. Even though I was just a facilitator for my team, I still need to help them and communicate well with them. Then, as I was the assistant secretary, I need to make sure that every formal letters, invitation, or even report was written perfectly and I need to correct them if they made any mistake in constructing the words for any formal matters. This helps me to work professionally with all the community members. This skills may be helpful for me in the future as every work scope need our professional skills to communicate with our leaders in the company. 

5. Reasoning 

Nothing is perfect in this world as well as there is no program without a problem and challenges. One of the problem that occur during the program that improved my critical thinking skills was when we suddenly had so much extra time and we didn’t have any backup plans to fill that free time. At first, I was really worried if we had to finish the program early as there was VIP there and I feel like it is not proper if we didn’t end the program as what we stated in the invitation card. Because of that, we need to brainstorm and come up with a new idea of activity. We finally made an activity called poison ball where all the participants need to pass around a ball with a background was playing and whoever held the ball as soon as the music stopped, they had to come in front and answer some questions from the emcee. I believe that this activity really helps in improving student’s soft skills and thinking skills as they need to talk in front of the audiences and need to answer the question quickly. But we still make the program as chill as possible. If the students had stage fright or not confident in answering the questions, we still help them to overcome their fear by stating to them that it is okay if they can’t give the right answer as long as they try to talk in front of many people. And finally the program run smoothly as we planned after several round of that extra activity. We were feeling very relieved because we manage to overcome that problem. After this scenario, I can finally become more relax if I have any problems occur in my life and try really hard to think rationally if I had to face with a big problem.

6. Reconstructing 

At the end of this program, I made a comparison of this program with any other sharing session program that I had joined before this, I found that this program helps me in improving my soft skills. As I said just now, I am an introvert person and this program really helps me a lot in overcome it. I finally doing something out from my comfort zone. I try to talk to strangers and it was very helpful for me in the present and future. Other than that, I also will make a good first impression during job interview because I already polished my communication and thinking skills throughout this program. Last but not least, I never regret each and every decision that I made to join this program as it gives a lot of benefits and positive outcome to myself.

7. Summary

In this self-reflection report, I have shown that I choose to join this Boxtroll 2020 program as a committee members was because I want to polish my soft skills especially my communication skills. I want to do something that allow me to go out from my comfort zone and this program was really helping me to do such things. Personally, I think the main objective of this program has been achieve and successfully delivered as I really get to use all the experiences that I get from my seniors and apply it at the right time