Post #3: Reflection on Project Proposal

Working on this proposal was the first time I was involved in such an extensive group project. And after having finished it, I can say that it was a lot of work but everything turned out well.

I must admit that we started fairly late and hearing that other groups had already finished more than half of their proposal made me feel quite nervous. And there was also something else that added to my nervousness: I feel extremely stressed when I have to talk in front of a group, so I knew that I would need a lot of practice for the proposal presentation. So all in all, at this stage I wished that we had started earlier.

However, starting from our first project meeting, a good dynamic between all three members started to develop. Everyone brought up valuable points to discuss and together we managed to find an agreement to all of the issues that arose.

We were still all very busy with lots of other assignments and projects, but we started to do our research and get familiar with the issue of youth in Singapore being over-reliant on their mobile phones. As I am neither from Singapore nor a smartphone user, I found it very interesting to get an insight into this part life here. I started being more observant towards how people interact with each other, how smartphones take up their attention even when they are talking to friends.

After feeling intimidated by all the other groups being much more prepared for the mock presentation, we invested even more of our heart and energy; group meetings got more frequent, emails more detailed and specific. We spent a lot of time discussing new issues that had come up and how all our ideas were going to meet where they were supposed to. I think we were all supportive towards each other which helped a lot. I think had there been some sort of aggression between the team members while everyone was stressed already due to other obligations it would have been much more draining and we might not have been as productive. But we managed to get it all together early enough so I could prepare for the presentation in time.

Looking back, starting a bit earlier might have taken some of the pressure off our shoulders. But since the external stress was not reinforced by internal stress, I didn’t mind us having to do a lot of work later than expected. I enjoyed getting to know the other group members also on a personal level and I think this greatly increased the quality of our discussions and made this experience a good one.