As the assistant leader of this project, I’d say that I have given quite a reasonable amount of contribution towards this project, just like the rest of my team members. What I really feel proud of is that I did not contributed solely through hard labour, but also in terms of leading, managing and organising our group and our progress. As soon as the ETP Project was announced by our lecturer, I made a move and formed our team as soon as possible. I was really glad that my groupmates from our CTS module were keen on working together again for our English project, as we were already used to understanding and working with each other. We also had the synergy which would give us an advantage to work as a team and progress smoothly throughout the project duration. In addition, we added one more member to our team (as it is compulsory to have 7 members on the team) and made it so that he fitted in right away! :D I love how we can be serious and discuss professionally when needed, and play and joke around together when not. We have a whatsapp group to discuss and remind each other about the project, and I would usually spam the group with what we’ll have to focus on next or what can be done to improve our project’s proposal and website. Sometimes, we would divide our tasks on whatsapp as well since we don’t have enough time to meet up before the deadlines.

 

                  Other than all that, I’ve also contributed to a lot of ideas for this project. For example, I suggested that we should relate the theme of the project to something that would be able to serve a purpose to the community, and that living life to the fullest doesn’t just mean how an individual should do so, but how we can assist others to live their lives fruitfully as well. Therefore, we decided to focus on ‘The Kindness Project’ where we’d help others live life to the fullest through kind thoughts and actions. While working on our proposal in google docs, I contributed in elaborating on our points to make sure that we would reach the given word count and criteria. I also made sure to proofread the proposal so that it would have minimal grammatical errors.

                  

                  As for the main focus of this project, the website, I was in charge of editing the animal shelter video and subtitling the Kindness Project video. I also proofread and edited most of the content of the website after the others typed the main ideas out, to make sure that we reach the word count (again xD). Not to mention, I also contacted MIAR, the animal shelter that we visited, and provided transport for our group to reach the shelter (well actually my dad did :”)). Right now, we’re working on the exhibition that’s going to be held on Wednesday, 19th July, and I think I gave some pretty good ideas on how we should display our booth and attract customers to visit us. I hope to contribute a lot more to the project and successfully present our project well on that day! 

 

                  “A challenge isn’t a challenge if there aren’t any problems to face!” I say as I think about all the problems that we’ve had to overcome over these past few months of working on the ETP. I think that the most crucial moment throughout the whole of our ETP was when we did not have a fixed place to visit and carry out a big part of our project yet. At that time, we were contemplating on whether to visit the fugee school, cancer patients or the animal shelter. Alas, we decided on the fugee school as we thought that it was the least mainstream place out of all three to visit. But when we contacted the fugee school for the first time, they did not give a reply, even after two days of waiting. Therefore, we decided to try again and call them this time, and got directed to sending another email to the founder of the school. After all the hassle we went through, we weren’t able to make an appointment with them as some of our group members couldn’t make it before the fugee school started their school holiday. In the end, we decided to use an alternative and solved the problem of us not having anywhere to visit by deciding on visiting the animal shelter, MIAR, instead. On the way to MIAR, we also faced a minor problem, the address written on their facebook page hadn’t been updated! We were really confused as to why there wasn’t an animal shelter in sight at first, but we solved that problem by contacting the caretakers and getting the current address from them, but ended up being late by an hour. I think that we should have confirmed the address with them before we went and I think that that is what I shall do next time.

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                  Another problem I faced or I felt that my group was facing was the poor time management that most of our groupmates had (DEFINITELY including me). For the proposal, even though we did most of it a few days before the deadline, I found myself editing it and only finding out about the rubric on the night before we had to pass it up, resulting in a proposal without good reference being handed in. Nevertheless, we still did okay but I think that we could’ve done much better if our time had been managed properly. Another example of poor time management is submitting the turn-it-in report at 00.00 when the deadline was at 00.02. Who knows what would have happened if I were late just by 2 minutes? I think we all would have known what would have happened. Actually, we did take precautions and sent our report 1 day earlier so there was still backup, but it was really stressful to have it sent at midnight that I almost gave myself a heart attack. And one more time management related problem, although it couldn’t be helped much, was that we did not have enough time to discuss and work on our project together face-to-face, due to us all having different schedules during weekends. To make it up for that, we would discuss in the whatsapp group or through google video chats, and sacrifice some activities in our schedule for this ETP.

 

                  One minor problem that I faced throughout the whole process of this project was having to manage the members’ work and my own work. It was not easy giving out tasks equally and sometimes I felt that some people didn’t do as much as the others because I couldn’t divide the tasks well enough. Also, I’m a bit kiasu even though I work last minute, so I have a lot of work coming on me especially if I want it to be almost perfect, which is why I have to proofread and recheck everything. But I think that our group did a good job working together, and what matters most is the outcome of it all. Sometimes we do have clashing opinions, and when we do, we’d end up discussing about it and favour majority in the end. I feel like we should have a post mortem to reflect on each other and to improve one another. I’m glad that we were able to face all of our problems and succeed in our ETP.

 

                   Yes, of course I enjoyed this project! I’ve gained a lot of experience from it, and learned many new things in life as well. But the main reason as to why I enjoyed this project is because I was able to carry it out with a bunch of great friends as group members. Even though we’ve only just met this year, we were able to work together in almost-perfect harmony and complete our ETP successfully. Honestly, I felt really happy whenever we had group discussions and sometimes even crack jokes and puns that would be the death of me, really, I laughed so hard whenever we did all that. Also, when we took our group pictures, it was a really wacky and fun experience for me. Back in high school, I remember taking pictures for the Interact Club but everything was so serious and rigid. I just want to say that I’m thankful for having such great group members, friends, during this foundation year and I hope that I’d be able to meet and work with people like them in the future. Another reason when I enjoyed this project is because this project is like a breather from all the artwork and drawing that we have to do, in another way it’s a minor stress relief from the other modules that I’m currently taking. Furthermore, this project reminded me of the time when I was working as the Comm. Service director in my school’s Interact Club and I really would like to spread kindness everywhere so that I can help others live life to the fullest as well. Most importantly, we got to visit an animal shelter and who doesn’t enjoy visiting doggos? xD

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                  Three of the six Taylor’s Graduate Capabilities that I have learned and picked up from this project are thinking and problem-solving skills, interpersonal skills and digital literacy. For thinking and problem-solving skills, I learned how to think critically and creatively through our group discussions on what topic we should choose for the project, where we should visit, how to create an interesting website and how we can help others live life to the fullest. I also learned how to define and analyse problems through critical thinking so that I could overcome them easily, for example the MIAR wild goose chase problem. I gained interpersonal skills by taking the role of the assistant leader of the group, and by understanding how our team works and who’s the best at working with what. Honestly, I’m still not the best at this but this project has helped me to improve my skills a lot. Just recently, I mobilised our team’s power and distributed the tasks that we have to complete before the exhibition day to the members, and I’d say we’re working quite efficiently now. Last but not least, I’ve become more literate in the digital field because of this project. I had to edit videos for the project, and had to learn how to use Adobe After Effects and Wondershare Filmora, and edit the website’s animations as well. I also had to spread our Kindness Survey and Father’s Day Survey through social media. Not to mention, I also created a Youtube Channel for Carpe Diem for our videos, and I hope that everyone reading this would like and subscribe to our channel!

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                  I really had fun with this project, and I hope that we, Carpe Diem, can help everyone understand the importance of living life to the future and spreading kindness around the world.