Reflecting on Learning

MOS 2205G Business Communications so far has been a wonderful learning experience, but I may be biased as I always enjoy classes with Melissa. I look forward to the class every week. In this post, I am going to discuss what I have learned to improve my emails and slides, what I have learned about imposter syndrome and myself, what I would do differently if I were to take a class like this again and lastly, what I need to still improve on.

The first thing that I have incorporated into my daily life is the writing tips and tricks we have learned. I use these the most in my emails. Email communication has become my preferred method of communication because I like to have written messages and instructions to refer back to. To improve them I have learned to take my time to write, revise and edit the email messages I send. I rewrite my emails until they are free of errors, and are as concise and direct as I can make them without losing details the reader needs to understand the message.

Recently, we learned about making our slides for presentations more effective. Before Melissa showed us Echo Rivera’s video about making over slides, my slides looked like the slides she started with. I was taught in previous classes to limit the amount of text on the slide and use images to capture the attention of the viewers. Echo’s video changed what I had previously learned. Using more slides is not a bad thing especially when each one emphasizes one point. I will be able to use these design tips to create slides for the class presentation as well as for other class presentations. I will also be able to create slides in the future for presentations in my career. On top of this, we have learned about using photos for our blogs and projects. We are able to find photos that we do not need to buy to use without facing copyright issues.

Learning about imposter syndrome was the most valuable thing I have learned so far. After completing the imposter phenomenon scale I scored 85. A score above 80 indicates that the respondent often experiences intense imposter phenomenon characteristics. While reading the assigned articles I found it easy to see parallels between my life and the lives of the participants in the study. For example, my older brother seemed to be labelled the successful and intelligent one and I was the girl of the family. Completing the test and reading the article has opened my eyes to things that may be holding me back from accomplishing what I want to accomplish.

If I were to take a class like Business Communications again, I would make more time to do the weekly assignments. This class has a lot of smaller assignments that were due approximately once a week. If I could do it over again, I would ensure I started the assignments sooner. I believe that although I got good marks on the assignments, I could do better if I gave myself more time to perfect them.

Lastly, I know I still need to improve on some skills. Some skills I need to continue to improve on is focusing on the audience’s needs. Also, as the course continues I believe that with the presentation we will all be able to practice our presentation skills which is a skill I always need to work on. I try to work on it as much as I can. I participate in class as much as I can and pushing myself to work with new people. I have enjoyed the opportunity to have group seating arrangements that have changed throughout the course. This has made it easier to interact with new people and learning to work with others. However, I wish the term was longer because I find that the points we split into new teams that we are just starting to create good relationships with the new peoples in our groups and then we have to create new relationships with the new group. Maybe instead of switching 3 times in the term, we could only switch twice.

As a fourth year student taking this second-year course, I feel that 2205G has been the most beneficial class related to life skills that I have taken at Brescia. The skills and resources we have discussed in class will be skills and resources we can carry forward with us into our lives beyond Brescia and university.

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