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 (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 (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!

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!

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.

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!

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.

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!

Oral Presentations (I)

Well, today we have discussed about something I believe is the most valuable part of the subject: oral presentations. I believe in the importance of this issue because, actually, I'm not quite good at it and I realize a good oral presentation of any project can lead to many doors being opened.

My biggest problem when doing an oral presentation is re-explaining things. What I mean with this is that I usually try to explain myself as best as possible (I'm too perfectionist), but because of this I try to find the best words to explain it and I use to get them mixed up, and I think I end up confusing people instead of leaving the ideas clear. So what I must do is just let my words flow (which is quite difficult for me; but everything is possible through practice) and not re-explain things, because probably if I say something wrong, people won't take notice about it, but if I go back and explain it again, they will surely realize that what I said was wrong, and that doesn't give a good impression. 

In my opinion, the trick when you want to do a good oral presentation is just to prepare it and practice it a lot, and when I say "a lot", I mean A LOT! No good presentation is totally improvised, and if it is, the person who does it is actually a genius. 

Here I leave you a video which I think is very interesting about how to do great presentations:

That's all for today. Thanks for reading my blog.

The secretary: problem or solution?

Yesterday was my turn to be the secretary in class and it was really hard for me to act as if I were the teacher due to my shyness. It is really difficult to think when there are so many eyes looking at you, waiting for you to say something, and many times I got my words mixed just because I couldn't think clearly in my head. Actually I was a bit quite nervous.

When it comes to talking in public, if it's a planned conference, where you maybe explain some slides which you have been working during a long time and you know exactly what to say and how to say it, because you have prepared it for many days, I've got no problem; but if I have to be the one who manages the class, telling people what to do or not to do, and things like that, it's really difficult for me to do it well. Maybe I should have prepared what I would have to do as the secretary, just as if I was explaining any other sort of thing, and that way I would maybe have done it better as I think I did, because spontaneity is something I am really short of. But even if I had decided to do that, I wouldn't have had enough time, because I was chosen just the day before...

But, despite all of this, I think it is a great and really valuable experience, which helps me get rid of that stupid shyness that keeps me from doing many things. And once you do something like this, you realize what you are doing wrong in order to change it.