What I have learnt

So, it’s reading week here, final report is submitted, and the poster session is over. In short, the final projects, and CS3216 in general, are awesome.

This final blog post (for this course only, guess I will continue writing after this :D) is about what I have learnt from the course this semester. But first, let’s have a look at what I said in the beginning :)

“First, I definitely want to improve my teamwork skills. In fact, I am quite silent and not confident to say my opinion frankly in meetings, or tend to do things only before deadlines.

Second, I want to learn how to learn new things.

Last but not least, programming skills. HTML5, MySQL, PHP and more, what can other module can make us learn all in one semester?” 

Let’s see how things have changed.

On my teamwork skills, I feel that I have improved a lot. In meetings, I have talked more and contributed more than I was in my first 2 years. However, I feel that it is still not at the level of contribution I expected, where I can easily (and frankly) express my opinion without causing any personal issues. I need practicing a lot on this, since I realized once I cannot express your ideas (even good or bad), later I will regret.

On “learning to learn new things”, this was an awesome take-away from CS3216. With tons of projects and deadlines, and even groupmates’s expectation, the need of learn new things comes naturally. And it’s true that I always feel uncomfortable when getting anything totally new, the feeling after understanding and getting things done are wonderful. Besides, I think now I’m much more confident in picking new technologies and make things from them, that’s a great change in the mindset, I must say.

On programming languages, my expectation is totally fulfilled. This is the module where I learn (and do) most new languages. On web programming, database configuration, various types of APIs, even iOS application for our final project, things are totally new at the beginning become too familiar at week 13. And the speed of picking up these is another exciting thing!

Other than that, I meet really awesome people here. Some with *incredible coding skills, some with professional communication and presentation ability, some are great at design and some are amazing entrepreneurs. I’ve been lucky to work with and learn from them. Anyway, this is one of the courses that I can look back and proud of being one of the students. And last, remember the first lecture, where Prof shows the picture about potential and intrinsic motivation ? With CS3216,  I think my bar is effectively higher than I was at that time. But I know I’ll keep pushing it higher, without CS3216.

It was such a great experience taking this module.