Reflection
MID-SEMESTER REFLECTION (GRADUATE SUCCESS ATTRIBUTE)
Half a semester has already passed, and I felt like I’m just taking my first step in UTM yesterday. Never crossed in my mind when I was still in high school that I get a chance to continue my studies in top universities in Malaysia. Up until today I was still amazed by the size of the campus and honestly, I did not think I can explore the whole place in just one year. When the semester started, I have kept in mind that I want to succeed in this software programming course and to be a better version of me . The course Graduate Success Attribute definitely sounds interesting to me. With 2 credit hour I think I can pass this class with good grade.
Day one of learning Graduate Success Attribute , I can already expect this course is a course full of assignment such ass essay , video and so on. The lecturer told our class to make a nametag and always put it on table in each GSA class session. Maybe because the lecturer wants to make it easy to call out random student? Frankly I always must make a new nametag each time because I never care or think to bring it. First impression of this class is I am actually boring and scare because this subject touch my biggest fear; speaking. I tried to be positive for this course and hopefully this class will excite my for next half semester.
The course GSA is a class that I never experienced before. It is solely on purpose to teach student how to become a ‘better’ person , or a better future-employee sort of. Although this is only elective course but for me it is very important because it can provide vast variety of skills a person need to succeed in life. This course teaches me about employability and soft skills. Firstly, the lecturer showed to the class a video on Youtube about software engineer jobs interview. Most of the candidate failed the task given which is quite tricky; write ‘anything’ on the whiteboard. Some candidates try to impress the interviewer by writing codes and such . Some write the compliment to the interviewer and to the company to gain trust. Some even stutter as did not write anything because of he is nervous . All of them rejected by the interviewer.
The candidate that caught my attention is the one that had high knowledge and award in many projects and also have a lot of achievement but still being rejected . The last candidate come late but the interviewer still accepts to interview him. He did the task exactly as being told that is to write “anything” . The interviewer immediately gain interest in him and ask him why he does not wear appropriate attire (suits and tie) and he simply answer he wants to be himself. From the video I can learned that it is important to obey the instruction given . I also learned that your degree or amount of certificate you have will never guarantee your jobs in the future. Besides , having identity or be yourself is what nowadays company are searching for.
Next lesson about employability that I can remember is that NEVER demand high salary or unrealistic salary comparing to the jobs that we are interviewing. Of course, do not accept ‘underpaid’ job because that will only causing to us to bet exhausted . Be realistic when demanding the salary because we need to understand that our country have ‘economic issue’ and thus gaps of salary comparing to other country is quite wide. As a fresh graduate we need to be careful when interviewing job as it is getting harder to get a job as number of fresh graduate spike and number of job only expand a few.
Next , I learned that in order to gain higher chance of being employed I need to have primarily leadership skill. In my life so far whenever a group assignment has been made , a leader must be selected and every time that happened no one wants to take the responsibility to be a leader. So, I have no other choice than step up and lead my group in order to finish the task given. My biggest enemy is myself. I am always a person who lack the confident to speak because of my ‘stutter’ condition. But I will not let that get in my way to be a successful person. From what I can see ,most of student lack soft skill. That problem can drag student down during studies and will cause them to be unemployed. Of course, other skills such as thinking skill ,problem solving, teamworking skill and etc also important.
Furthermore, I learned about scholarship skill. Not that scholarship involving money. It is a skill to manage information and organize them. Scholarship skill is all about how to be good reader, researcher , thinker , author , presenter and reviewer. All these six things inter-related to each other . The scholarship skill has 4 core aspect. Firstly, be able to find and manage information from various sources. Secondly ,be able to accept new ideas and apply self-learning. Thirdly , be able to expand curiosity and gain more knowledge. And lastly , be able to conduct systematic research which quite frankly the hardest aspect comparing to others. The activity, ‘How to a holistic person’ that my class have conducted during that scholarship skill lecture day is forming group with random classmates and given topics for example my team got “How to be a leader” . Then my group and I discuss this topic and each everyone of us give ideas to be presented in front of the classes. From this activity I learned the crucial part of being a leader is all about communication between co-workers or in other word soft skill is core to be a successful leader. I also learned to be a holistic person you need to have 5 characteristics; firstly a good son or daughter ,secondly a successful student ,thirdly a responsible citizen , fourth a good servant of God and lastly a good leader.
Then , the lecturer gave the class individual study case which is to write an essay regarding any topics . I then set myself to topic regarding automation taking away jobs because I think that is the existed relations between software engineer and outside world. As much as I did not like writing essay , I knew to be a better person I need to grasp as much skill and knowledge as I could .
For the next part of the semester , I think I will try my best to push myself outside of comfort zone . As I said before my biggest fear is speaking in front or public speaking . Most of the time I stay quiet and did not want to speak because I know I will stutter, and it will only embarrassed me. I will also try to accomplish the task and assignment given by lecturer as hard as I could. Actually, for the past half semester I hardly communicate with international students because I fear speaking in English and for introvert as myself , its hard to befriend someone I did not know well.
The challenge that I have faced for now in this course is of course to speak up my opinion whenever I am in class or with group discussion . In few weeks to come I am hoping that I will gain confidence to speak up my voice . Next is a problem with myself which is laziness, and this always drag me down in my life as student. For example, this reflection assignment which I should finish early and submitted it last night. But due to my headache and procrastination this assignment is definitely will be submit past due time . In the meantime , I will try to improve myself and avoid being procrastinate towards my next assignment.