Reflection on Proposal

It has been a long time since I last updated this blog. I just checked the ES2007s schedule and realised that the next blog post will only be due in 2 weeks' time and the topic will be on "Reflection on Oral Presentation". Hence, I thought it will be a good idea for me to a topic on "Reflection on Proposal".

Brad had all of us gathered in small groups last thursday to share our thoughts on our group proposal. It was really a great idea as I had the opportunity to learn from the experiences of others like the problems they faced and how they go about resolving them. I never had a chance to do so for any of the projects which I did previously. All the post project discussions were entirely on the information which should be included (for engineering modules) and how the slides should be done (for business modules). However, none of the discussion was on handling interpersonal relationships while working on the projects. At the end of the sharing session, I realised that all my classmates in my group have somehow improved their effective communication skills from the way they resolved the various problems they faced while working on the project as a result of different working styles, working habits and personality differences. That night, I thought really hard over what have I gained from working on this proposal. To my horror, I realised that I am reverting back to my old ways like being insensitive to the feelings of the others and using very sharp comments especially after the comment Brad gave on the tone I adopted for my group's proposal cover letter.

While working on this proposal, I see all the problems which I always face while doing project work re-surfacing such as difference in writing style, expectation and working attitude. The most frequent problem I face is writing style. I believe the main editor always face this problem: How much to edit? Every piece of work is an effort and sometimes, I find it impossible to retain more than 50% of a piece of work. This often happens when the writer is not concise or the information is not relevant. However, the main problem is that most of the time, I do not know how to let the writer know why I remove certain parts from his/her work. It is really frustrating to sit in front of the computer for hours trying to incorporate everything from a piece or rather, make everything relevant in the main project when I can make my life easier by simply removing the entire part or rephrase the part to make it more relevant to the project. I always find myself trapped in this situation not knowing what to do. Hence, I hope that someone will enlighten me what I can do to minimise the damage to the other party and get myself out of this nasty situation which always bother me when I do project work.