Business Communications class was not the course that I, and most of the class, expected it to be. The course syllabus outlined 4 main components such as Speaking Skills, Writing Skills and Cross Cultural Understanding, but in the end the one thing that I brought back was only Presentation Skills.
Not trying to boast, but even then I did not learn much as most of what were taught were common sense. And I didn't agree with some points which the professor mentioned as there really is no one absolute way to design your slides or do a presentation.
But this was one of the lighter courses which did not require heavy reading or analysis of cases. To be fair, I did improve my presentation skills and had fun in the end. During our first assignment, we were asked to give a solo presentation on any topic. I had to change my topic a few times just to get one which I thought was interesting enough. I spoke on "Being Malaysian Chinese".
Some of my classmates come from homogenous culture or were pure Burmese, American, Indian, whatever. So the term Malaysian Chinese itself was intriguing to them. I shared on my ancestry, the upbringing my brother and I had, and the multi-lingual conversations that go on in my home. Even the professor enjoyed my presentation.
Our 2nd assignment was a group project on Cross Cultural Communications. We had to choose a country and present the do's and don'ts of doing business in that particular culture. We chose China and incorporated some role-playing to make it more interesting. As the group leader, I
For the final project, the professor reshuffled the groups and had us do a roadshow presentation in which we were the top management of companies trying to get investors to pump in their money. My group was Red Hat. I had really good team members as each one took initiative to contribute to the group. It's always a breeze and joy to work with members like that. I had the same experience for my Marketing Communications and Mobile Business Strategies teams as well.
Since it was just a week before the finals and everyone had priorities for other subjects, we couldn't practice as much as we should. One of our teammates brought along her son and that kinda distracted the concentration somewhat. I don't blame her nor her son, he is such an adorable kid.
On presentation day, we delivered better than rehearsed. The opening gimmick, or hook as what we're taught, was a success. We did a blue screen act which had the audience sympathising with us as they taught it was a genuine technical error. But I turned it around and put it as Red Hat's advantage as the largest distributor of Linux software. Slides were welldone as they incorporated the corporate colours as well.
We had compliments from both the professor and students alike. Again, I thank my team for how it all turned out. It doesn't matter if we were one of the top teams, but having people talk about our hook days after that never failed to put a smile on my face. It had been an awfully exhausting week, but jobs well done like that are worth it all.
*Pictures are of the area surrounding the campus, credit due to the school's yearbook imagebank
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