BUSINESS COMMUNICATION COURSE REFLECTION

The Business Communication course has helped me a lot to overcome my fear of working in a real world business. I was very pessimistic about my ability as an employee because the working environment is getting more and more competitive and harsher. That was the reason made me feel so unconfident at the first place. However, with all experiences I have learnt so far, I am now able to blend in any situation quickly and easily as what I have done in the Marketing Department of Star Industries Company.
I have taught to dress nicely in formal, competitive work place which I had never stood in the same position before. In the past, some of the courses, for example Business Framework and Research report proposal, it required me to go interview people in some companies and I had to admit that I dressed like a fool in front of their eyes. However, I realized that it was not really difficult after having true experience through this course. From the first moment of the Business Communication class, I was strongly impressed by the way the lecturer told us to dress politely like a real employee at work; I was taught to wear trousers or slacks, shirt need to be bottomed up and no open toed shoes and sandals, and it had to maintain the same for the whole course. At the beginning I thought like I returned to my time of high school when all students had to wear uniform to class, and since I was at RMIT I have felt very comfortable because I could dress freely. Thus, when I was told how to dress, it was kind of an unwilling thought ran through my head. However, by this time – at the end of the course I feel thankful for what my lecturer forced me to do. I am about to end the Bachelor program in couple semesters thus start learning to be an actual employee is very important so I will not lose in new environment. Hence, begin with very simple thing like clothes will help me step by step familiarize myself with forward future. I reckon my weakness is about communication that I am quite nervous when communicated with strange people; this course was not only about the appearance but also guided me how to write a formal e-mail as well as behave in a good manner in the workplace. I have significantly developed my ability to write a formal email which I never done well before. My result for the email assignment was quite high which indicated that the fearfulness could be eliminated by well training. Unlike other courses required only to work as a team, this course asked me to work in a department and also work with other departments in a company, that why I had to communicate as much as possible to achieve the goals of this course. This makes me feel better off as I could communicate with other people well.
Learning from the lecturer is the easiest way to do as she always willing to be there to teach us everything, hence if we want to be a good learner we should learn the basic and needed things from the one who close to us. The lecturer was very strict on each of our paper work, not only about content of the text but also she concerned more about spelling and grammar. After the course, I found myself become more carefully when writing an assignment; as a result my grammar is better also. Behind that I learnt many other things from the lecturer such as being punctual, serious attitude in work. She also taught us to manage time technically which will be the first thing I try to apply for my recent routine. I was shocked when she shown me how much time I was wasting in a week. Normal people sleep eight hours a day, plus another eight hours doing house work, travelling etc (as she count), and there are eight hours left for me to study. However, I usually use up about five hours for entertaining and only three hours for studying. Having learned about that, I now question myself how could I waste my time in these worthless things. As a next step, I need to re-schedule my time to make it more efficiently and avoid spare time.
Thirdly, I had have experienced a whole new level of teamwork in this course. Unlike what I had learnt before this time I had a chance to work with all employees and the CEO as in a company, thus I had the idea of how things flow in a real firm. Through doing the report, I understand that when it has a trouble in a company, not one department is responsible for the situation but all parts of the company should take the risk and think about what they have done as well as its effects on current issue. So even it was small, the same mistake will never occur again. Besides, as in a role of a team leader, I learnt the way to lead my teammates work together and to make it run fluently. For example, instead of dividing work for members in hurry, I spent a bit more time to figure out their strengths and weaknesses. One of my teammate was not good at writing as the others so I assigned a job of researching and synthesizing findings for her, so the others had available resources to write. From that, the result was better and responsibility for the task of a member was higher. According to Johnson, D., Johnson, R.& Holubec, E. (1998), positive interdependence connects students together so a group will not achieve succeed if its members are not successful.
That was the most interesting and well organized course I have ever had. After 3 months working with my teammates as well as other students in the class I have a clearer vision of how a company works and gained more experiences to deal with trouble. Additionally, the lecturer with her serious and strict manner at work had inspired me to learn and try to rearrange my schedule in order to use time wisely. Another useful thing that I learnt in the course was team working skill and become an effective leader. However, the Working Communication text book seemed to be useless as I have rarely used it. It’s containing maybe worthiness but it is not really a useful studying tool.

REFERENCE
Johnson, D., Johnson, R.& Holubec, E. 1998. Cooperation in the classroom. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, viewed 13th May 16, 2010, < http://www.ukcle.ac.uk/resources/temp/assessment.html>