Projects Day Reflections

Personally, the projects day were quite the disaster for me. Mistakes were obviously made, however what is important to learn from the mistakes we made.

1. I felt that I lacked the appropriate leadership skills. One big regret in my project was the lack of one of my team member's participation- Justin. However, this was not to blame him. Our project was very messy. Essentially the making of the prototype and finalization of the slides were all done one week before the actual judging. The work was rather unequally divided among us. Most of the time, it was me and my other member, Samuel carrying out the work. The other members, Kay Han and Justin rarely did anything. This was because I came into contact with Samuel more easily than Justin.

I would like to place the blame of the disorganized workload on me, the leader of the group. At first, I blamed the other two members a lot for their lack of contribution. However, after the Semi-Prelims, I realized that blaming them was not appropriate. I understood an important point- I did not assign work to them. I feel that this has been a major mistake on my part. The blaming essentially was also wrong.

2. Secondly, I felt that the overall flow of the project is incorrect. I shared my the story of my project with my tuition teacher, together we dissected the whole process and successfully identified the problems. The crucial mistake was at the very start. We had an idea before every else- we were so big headed. We spend a whole 2 months working on that idea even before the start of the year. Then, during the first IvP peer mentoring session, disaster struck. Instantly, the idea was rejected and "shot down" by most of the people.

I thought about this. It was very unsafe for us to have jumped the gun. The problem was that the idea was not secured, but yet we still chose the category. We took a huge gamble- a gamble that failed. What could have been better, was to put in the extra effort to confirm the project with a mentor, so that at least there is an insurance.

I feel that this can help me with my projects day so that next time, disaster can be avoided.