Presenting in the Auditorium!

Hi everyone! Today I will start saying that this post is probably going to be a bit too long because there are a lot of things that I'd like to tell you about! I know long posts aren't good, but I have too much to say ;)

First of all, as the title says, today was the day in which we had to present our Aerospace Technology project in the auditorium. We were the third group to present its project.

At first I was a bit nervous, wondering if we would do it well or what would happen, but guess what? After the first group finished his presentation, we had a lot of technical problems and the second group couldn't present until 30 minutes later or so! This was because there was a power failure in the whole building and every time that the lights turned on, three seconds later the lights turned off again. This was quite annoying but it actually relaxed me! 

This was our paper airplane :)

After this, my only fear was if our airplane would fly while presenting. I'll explain this: to draw the audience's attention, we decided to make a paper airplane and throw it during the presentation. It wasn't the typical one, so we didn't know if it would fly (although we tried it before the presentation, sometimes it flew and sometimes it didn't).

Luckily it flew! In fact, the whole presentation went really well. I've improved a lot since I started this course, and I'm very proud about how the presentation went and about my progress regarding communication skills (especially with oral presentations).

Moreover, after finishing all the presentations, we were told that our project about the aircraft prototype for 2040 was selected to be the one that will be presented on the 25th June to some companies that are coming to the university! This is great news because it means that real companies are going to know our names! It's nice to know that sometimes our effort is compensated with things like these.

And since today was a great day and obviously I'm feeling really good (although the day after tomorrow I have a very difficult and boring exam), I'd like to share with you an amazing cover of the song "Feeling Good":

This seems to be the last post, regarding the fact that we won't have more Communication Skills classes, so I'd like to thank you all for reading my blog and I hope you enjoyed it! Maybe someday I'll create a new blog and I hope you like that one too!

Thank you all very much for reading! Bye!

Aerospace Technology Project (V)

So, on Thursday (as all of these days) we have been working with the Aerospace Technology project. This time, the teacher told us that if we wanted to, any of us could voluntarily present our project to the rest of the class. As nearly every voluntary activity, no one seemed to want to do their presentations, but I thought it was a good opportunity to present before the real presentation. This way we would be constructively criticized and therefore improve our presentation skills for the final presentation.

In addition, at first I doubted about if I wanted to present or not because we didn't prepare it much and therefore it would be improvised. But actually the teacher told us this was good because if we were able to improve our presentation without preparing it, once it is prepared it would be even better!

In fact, it was quite clear that the presentation was improvised because instead of lasting the required 5 minutes, we presented for about 10 minutes. Besides this, I realize I am improving my presentation skills and the main reason for this is because we have had to do many presentations all along the course. 

This makes me come back to what I have already talked about in other posts: the importance of preparing and practicing in order to improve anything, especially oral presentations. 

That's all for today, thanks for reading!

Aerospace Technology Project (IV)

Hi again everybody! Well, on Wednesday we were told that the "best" project per course and per degree will be chosen to be presented to an external company. And if this happens, the chosen project will have to be presented in about 2 minutes on the 25th June. 

So we won't know which project will be selected until Tuesday (tomorrow) or maybe Wednesday, but if my group's project is chosen, it will be both positive and negative. The obvious positive part is that it will be presented to a real company, which is great, but therefore it will require more work, and it will be difficult to summarize such a project because if it is already difficult to present it in 5 minutes, in 2 minutes it is even harder. Despite this, I think the effort would be worth it!

Not much more to say for today. Thank you for reading!

Aerospace Technology Project (III)

So today we continued working on the Aerospace Technology Project but this time, instead of researching, I spent the whole class modifying the report that we have to do for this project. 

I started this report a few days ago and what I mostly did today was ask the teacher for all the many doubts and questions that came to my mind while doing it. So, when the teacher came to me, I started asking... and asking... and asking... and when it seemed that I had finished, something else came to my mind and therefore I had to ask another thing more. I am not exagerating. My partner even called me a "constant question machine", you can see it in his blog: http://timetochangeurself.blogspot.com.es/2013/06/my-partner-is-still-doing-questions.html.

Regarding this, I felt a bit guilty since I wanted to have the teacher only for myself, because whenever she left in order to answer other classmate's questions, another trillion questions bumped into my head, and I got a bit stressed, since time passed by and she was still answering other's questions and not mine. This lack of patience that I had might be caused because I really enjoy doing this project, which I think is quite interesting and useful. Therefore I want to do it as best as possible (I am very perfectionist) and whenever a doubt came to me, I just wanted to solve it quickly in order to continue doing the rest. In addition, after that class I had an exam and thus my head was thinking really quickly about many different issues, which increased my need of having a quick answer.

That's all for today. Thanks for reading!

Aerospace Technology Project (II)

Well, on Thursday we continued researching and doing the Aerospace Technology project about the design of the aircraft for 2040. In my opinion what we did that day doesn't have much to do with communication skills, but I really enjoyed it and some nice and creative ideas actually came to my mind during this class (maybe the fact of not having a "technical class" made my imagination flow more).

Therefore, I can't give any opinion or advice about issues related to communication skills. Actually this made me ask the teacher what I could write about in this post, because the only things that I thought about during the class were issues related to fuel alternatives for the aircraft or different designs for aircraft configurations.

To be honest, I already knew I wouldn't get any clear answer (because I know the teacher wants us to discover the answer by ourselves, making us reflect about what we ask), but despite this, I finally asked. Guess what? All (or at least the majority) of the answers to my questions weren't actually answers, but instead she asked me the same thing with other words in order to make me think about what I had just asked. I don't really like it when people aren't clear and answer questions with other questions, but (unfortunately) I realized that I also do that... 

This reminds me of the typical saying: "Do not do to others what you wouldn't want others to do to you".

That's all for today. Thanks for reading!

Aerospace Technology Project (I)

Hi again everybody! Well, what I most liked from today is that we continued doing the Aerospace Technology project about the design of the aircraft for 2040.

Before, we were told (again) that, apart from the presentation that we will have to do about this project in the Aerospace Technology class (more related to technical issues), we will also have to do another one in the auditorium (more related with communication skills) and this one will have to be much more "simple" because we will only have 5 minutes to present the whole project and we will do it in front of many people who may not have any idea about engineering. So we will have to manage how to explain all the technical issues about our project in a way which anyone can understand, but this will actually require a lot of effort in order to "simplify" what we want to say without relying on technical data or concepts. 

The main idea from this post is that it is really important to learn how to communicate something to people who don't have the same knowledge as you have, because in the future we will surely have to do so, and probably many times!
Not everybody is an engineer...

Thank you for reading!

No more activities!

So the class we had yestersday (4th June) was the first class without activities which actually are for the "Communication Skills" subject! This is because from now on we are going to be working on every presentation or project we have in other subjects, so that the teacher can help us make them better.

I find great this idea of having more time for doing things from other subjects because we actually need it! Now that the end of the course is near, apart from the final exams, we have so many projects and presentations to do and therefore, having an "extra time" to do them is quite a relief, and even more if we have the opportunity to do them better according to the suggestions that the "Communication Skills" teacher may give us.

I know this isn't a really interesting post, but I needed to talk about this relief! Thanks for reading!

Interview with the boss

As I have already said before in previous posts, in this subject (Communication Skills) we are constantly simulating a work environment instead of a class, so on the 30th May I had a sort of meeting or interview were the "boss" (the teacher) wanted me to assess myself and tell her how I think I am going in the "company" (the course) and if I think I have met my objectives or expectations, which I honestly think I have exceeded a bit, because I've done some things that I actually didn't expect to end up doing.

So I guess this is quite interesting, according to the fact that it makes us get closer to our future jobs. And although some people may think that having this subject in the first course of our degree is not a good idea (they think it would be better to have it in the last course, because then we are near to finding a real job), I really believe it is a great idea to have it at the beginning, because in my opinion, the sooner you start, the better, because that way you have the whole degree to improve what you are doing wrong. In addition, you can use everything you learn in this subject, not only in your future job, but also throughout all your subjects in your degree, practicing with every task or work, and making them in a better way. 

Remeber, practicing is one of the most important things in order to succeed!

That's all for this post. Thanks for reading!

Group presentations aren't a mixture of individual ones!

So, the groups that didn't present yesterday had to do it today, and two of those groups showed us the importance of knowing about the whole presentation and not only about the part that they are going to present. 

This was because these two groups weren't actually "groups" because some members where missing and the group was only composed by one single person who had to do the whole presentation. Actually they reacted very well and could go through their respective presentations very well.

The only thing I want to leave clear in this post is that, whenever you do a group presentation, don't just focus on your own part. Instead you should at least have a general idea from the whole presentation, knowing some parts from the other members just in case something happens (as it happened today) and you end up presenting other's work. 

Not much more to say today. Thank you for reading my blog!

Powerpoint, Prezi, a Poster... or what?

Hi again! Well, today we had to make a little oral presentation, but we couldn't use PowerPoint to support it. I realize this is a really good idea because in my opinion, PowerPoint is a great software, but it is too much used, and sometimes it is better to make something different.

Therefore, what could we use instead of the typical PowerPoint? There are many answers to this question, and it mostly depends on what you are going to talk about. 

For example you could use some kind of poster (you can do it virtually by using the .pdf format) which shows as a whole all the main aspects you are going to talk about, using some images, graphs, etc... that make it more attractive. Or you could also do a mind map. Actually, today we were a bit "surprised" because one of the groups presented using the FreeMind software. In my opinion, it is a good idea to use it, but I personally don't like the image it gives to the presentation, because you actually don't see a presentation, but instead it is like an editor... I think the best alternative to using PowerPoint is Prezi. I really like this tool because it makes very dynamic presentations and you have much freedom according to design. If you are creative and you know how to use Prezi (I say this because at first it seems a bit difficult to use it... at least it was for me), you can make amazing presentations that really draw the audience's attention.

So those are the types of tools for presentations I think we can use, but that doesn't mean that they are the only ones! In fact, if you choose another one which hasn't been used yet, it may even attract more your audience, just because of doing something different to the rest!

That's all for today... Thanks for reading!

Writing Technical Documents

So this time I'm going to talk a bit about writing technical documents, because as a future engineer, I guess I will have to do many of them.

On Thursday we started this topic by reading an introduction to writing technical documents. We were divided in groups, and each group was assigned a specific chapter (or chapters) from a guideline about how to write technical documents.

According to our chapters, I realize the most important task when writing any document (as it constantly said throughout the chapter) is to define its purpose and identify the audience, because what we actually want is to explain our objectives and we want our readers to understand them! Once we know the purpose/objective and the audience of the document, the rest will simply come (more or less...). 

In order to make the readers understand easily what is written, in my opinion, the most important requirements are to have a vocabulary adapted to the audience's level of knowledge and to have it well structured and organized. And regarding the content, obviously, we can't forget to be objective!

I realize this is a really important task, and moreover, really valuable for the future, because as engineers what we want is to bring our ideas to life by sharing them with other people which will help us do so, and therefore, we have to tell them (usually with a written document) what we want in a way that they can understand. In my opinion, the problem with this is that we normally have multiple audiences with several levels of knowledge, and we have to make them ALL understand our document, so we have to make a big effort.

Project Report Guide

Hi again everybody! Today we learned how to do a project report, which I realize is really important. We will have to do one for our Aerospace Technology project, in which we have to design an aircraft for 2040.

But the "guide" or "template" we were shown about how to write this kind of reports isn't only for final projects (which is obvious), but it would also be interesting to use it when doing other "long" reports (with more than 6 pages), because it gives a better image and it is also a really good practice to do "little-project" reports before the final project one. This way, when we do the final project report, we will be used to doing this type of things and therefore we won't have much trouble with doing it.

This guide is a bit too long, and has many several sections, but many of them can be done automatically, which was a big relief.

That is the good part of new technologies: many things can be done (and changed) in an easy way by just using automatic tools.

Adaptation to Change and Creativity Test

So yesterday we had a "relaxed" class, because we had to do a test (which actually was veeeeery long...). This was because an external company made this test for us and it will only be available until this Friday, so the teacher preferred us to do it in class, rather than at home.

Maybe the most interesting thing from the test was one part, which had some questions and exercises that had to be solved in a creative way. Two of the answers to the questions that most impressed me were from the following:

Q1: A man lies dead on a field. Next to him is a non-opened package. There is no one else on the field. How did he die?

Q2: A young man, for leaving quickly to meet his friends, forgot his driving license. Once on the street, he didn't stop at the red traffic light and continued through a road in the opposite sense. All of this was observed by a policeman, who didn't even try to stop him. Why?

The answer will be at the bottom of this post, but there is not one "correct" answer. That is what I like about this type of activities: you can be as creative as you want! In addition, maybe your answer is better than the theoretical one. 

Regarding the exercises, one of them was the typical one of joining 16 points with 7 lines (try it also with 6), without lifting your pencil and without going two times through the same point (in the case of with 6 lines, start and end at the same point).

The theoretical answer to the questions asked above are:

A1: The man jumped from an airplane but his parachute didn't open. That was the non-opened package.

A2: The young man was walking.

I hope you enjoyed this post. Search for this kind of activities because they are really interesting, valuable and fun! And there are loads of different types!

Thanks for reading my blog!

SWOT Analysis

So what is a SWOT analysis? To be honest, I've never done one and I first heard about this in our last class, on Thursday... But because I have to do one, I will talk a bit about what it is.

So first of all, SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats, and it is used to evaluate these characteristics or elements. It is an important type of analysis which, after doing it, it can help you improve, by knowing what you are good at (strengths) and what you are doing wrong, and therefore should improve (weaknesses). If you want me to be honest, I don't really understand how the "opportunities" and "threats" should be used; despite this, I guess it is the same as the strengths and weaknesses, but related to your competitors. I mean, it may be what you are doing better than others (opportunities) and what others are doing better than you (threats).

So the SWOT analysis is a really useful and easy tool anybody can use in order to success, by realizing what he/she can potentiate and what he/she should change in order to improve.

Thanks for reading my blog!

How to criticize assertively

Hi again everybody! So today I'm going to talk a bit about criticism, but (again) in an assertive way! As you may have realized if you have read my previous posts, I keep talking... and talking... and talking... about assertiveness, but this is because of its importance.

So the most relevant point on assertive criticism is that any critic you do (if you want to do it asertively) you must do it so that it is helpful for the person you are criticizing, what I mean is, all your critics must be constructive and you must explain why you have that opinion; don't criticize without giving any reasons!

Another point to take into account, apart from knowing how to criticize, is to know how to receive criticism. Regardless on if somebody is criticizing you in an aggressive or in an assertive way, you must try to respond in an assertive way (as always), by explaining why you agree or disagree with what is being criticized.

Obviously, there are some situations where it is really difficult to act assertively, just because our emotions can be too strong; but we must always try to act as assertive as possible, although it may depend on each situation (in my opinion, sometimes it's better just to keep quiet, or to act passively).

Thank you for reading my blog!

Time to improve!

Well, in our last class our teacher told us that we could use part of that class to modify any activity of the ones we had uploaded, if we considered to do so. 

The first thing that came to my mind when hearing this was "Great!" because on the one hand that meant we wouldn't have to do any new activity, and on the other hand we could improve our uploaded activities (without loosing time at home).

So when I started modifying some activities I realized how different we can see things depending on when we see them, because when I did those activities I thought I had done as best as I could and that they were "perfect", but now that I see them again there are many things that I decided to change in order to improve them.

What I noticed from doing this is that everything is improvable and relative to the moment, there is no final or "perfect" solution, it's only a matter of adapting to each time and situation.

References

Oh my God! We have been three days talking about assertiveness, which I don't care because I believe it is important, but in two of those days we have been asked to do extra posts, so... How can I do 5 reflective posts about the same topic without repeating myself?

Anyway, I will try to talk about something at least a bit interesting and different from the previous blog entries: I will talk about citing references on a document. 

Today we had to search for some videos about assertiveness techniques, and then we had to talk about them on a document, so we had to reference the videos in a proper way. My first thought when we were told to do this was something like: "isn't it enough to put the URL of the video?" Obviously the answer was and is no. 

But what really positively surprised me was that there is an option when writing a document (for example in Microsoft Word) in which you can cite references automatically according to several standard styles. After knowing this, what came to my mind was that there are so many options and aspects of the "Microsoft Office world" that we don't actually know are there and what they are for... And the worst part of it is that nowadays (usually) we use this tool for nearly everything! And we don't quite know how to use its whole potential... 

So start investigating in this type of tools if you want to really get to know how much power they actually have!

Thank you for reading my blog! :)

Assertiveness Techniques

So as you can see we keep talking about assertiveness, but this time about techniques.

I guess it is a really important issue because if we want to success and get to be a better person, we should constantly use this techniques, practicing a lot, in order to end up using them naturally.

If we use this techniques, which we can find all over the Internet (nowadays everything you want to know about is there), we will be closer to acting in a way which respects the needs, wants, rights and opinions of both the person you are talking with and you.

I'd like to share with you a video which explains one of these techniques. It sorts of explains how to say no in an assertive way, by using two techniques: fogging (which is agreeing with some of the fact, but retaining the right to choose your behavior and to say no) and the broken record (which simply consists on repeating and insisting in what you want or feel).

I believe it is quite good because it first explains, then makes examples and finally gives feedback about those examples. 

I hope you find it interesting! Thanks for reading.

Two posts in the same day. Why??

In this post I don't actually have much to say; just that I don't really understand why our teacher sometimes wants us to do an "extra blog post" about the activity we have done in class...

If we do several activities in class, or something interesting happens, I don't have any problems with writing two or more posts because I do have something to write about. But if we have only discussed about one same topic during the whole class (as it happened today), what should I talk about in the second post? (the first one is the "extra" one)

Well, it is supposed that the entries on the blog must be about reflections we had in class, so in the last post I talked about the thoughts I had about what we did in class (the extra entry about the activity) and in this post I'm reflecting about not knowing what to write about when this happens.

In fact, this entry isn't really valuable or interesting, it's just what I think about being pushed to do something by force... (which is even more annoying when you don't have enough time to do it properly)

No problem with saying "No"

Hi everyone! Today in class we discussed (in my opinion) about a really valuable topic: how to say no (in an assertive way).

It is an important topic to talk about but, for me, it is even more because generally it is really difficult for me to say no. When somebody asks me to do something, even though I have more things to do, I usually do it (and I also try to do my best in it; loosing a lot of time...) because if he asks me, it might be because he needs me, and I believe it is really important to help people, so I feel guilty when I don't do so. But what I realized today is that my wants and rights are also important, and if I know how to say no, the other person will understand my reasons and therefore he won't care about it. In addition, if I keep doing everything I'm asked to, it will come a day when I will probably explode because I won't be able to do anything. What is important is to achieve a win-win solution! (Not a "you win, I lose" solution).

But there are a few times when I actually say no, but when I do it it's usually because I really feel unrespected and I can't stand it. The problem is that when this happens I'm quite aggressive, so it's also important to know how to change this way of saying no into an assertive way.

So, sometimes we need to say no, and there is no problem with that, but what we have to know is how to say it. If we learn how to do it in an assertive way, we will actually success in many areas of our lives.

Thanks for reading!

Being assertive

Well, today I'm going to talk about assertiveness, (in my opinion) a quite difficult-to-achieve skill which is essential for good leadership.

Assertiveness is based on balance: it requires being direct about your wants and needs while still considering the rights, needs, and wants of others. So the problem with this is that there is a really fragile line between assertiveness and aggressiveness (which is doing what is in your own best interest without thinking in the others' rights, needs or feelings). It's really common ending up being a bit aggressive, just because it might be easier than being assertive; but there is also another fragile line between being assertive and being passive. This is what actually happens to me, and when you are passive, you normally don't get what you want just because you think too much in the other people's needs or feelings. So this is something I must change if I want to get to be someone someday. 

Assertiveness helps to build self-confidence and provides many other benefits for improving relationships at work and in other areas of life. When you are assertive, you act fairly and with empathy, so the power you use comes from your self-confidence, not from intimidation. This way, people will see you as a leader and someone they want to work with.

I hope you find my blog interesting and useful. Thanks for reading!