What I have learned from the module CS3216

13 weeks. 2 tech assignments and 1 final project. Tens of external/internal pitching. Dozens of case studies. Hundreds of hours. One last CS3216.

-The 10,000 hrs of deliberate work

stuck in my brain for so long. 5 years to make a professional? Sounds quite costly. I’ve seen people trying to take shortcuts or whatever to make money or gain power and 5 years is too long for them. Is that what I want? What about when it gets real to me when I need a job? Hopefully I’ll make the right decision in the future.

It sounds a bit off the topic but that’s part of what I’ve learned from the module. The learning process is never going to be easy and comfortable and the 10,000 hrs of deliberate training is something I’ll have to gone through.  Nice to get prepared now before more sh*ts coming.

-Life is not playing computer game

there’s no mission-failed-and-restart mechanism. I’ll have to stand up from where I fall, and keep going into the unknown. Every decision I make is irrecoverable and critical, not like in the game where trail-and-error is always the no-brain way to go. Lucky enough, I still have time to try, regardless of the success of failure, and learn from the experience. In some sense, life is like playing computer game though, but we are leading how the game goes instead of following the plot.

-From engineering  to business

It’s a hard turn for me. As a engineering student, I admit that I don’t have enough business skills to handle real life cases. I’ve attempted two business modules in my first year of study but found it not that interesting to me. Going deep into the tech side and solving problems sill captures my heart the most. Thankfully I’ve learned a lot more about business stuffs from this class. “What is your business module” is one of the most commonly asked question among us and we have to think hard to find a sustainable business. When studying gets real, it sparks, no business book used, no business terms taught, but so naturally learnt. Also it’s a good time, as a year 2 student, to reflect on the road I’m going to take. To be a pure tech guy, or strike some balance between tech and admin to enable myself to step into a new era.

-Working in a team, as a team

Another great feature of this module on getting things real: to work with different people that you might never imagine. Working in a team is so realistic in the world now. It’s even more important for international students like me to adapt to this global working environment. I’ve found out that communication in the team is the utter most important component. The the word “communication” means a lot: it can happen between programmers, designers, tech guys and biz buys, all across. When people have different perspective, that’s when the “mis” comes in. I’ve suffered a lot from miscommunication. Sometimes I didn’t get my message across, other times missed out key decisions the others made. Over-communication in a team is really sometimes a need.

-Looking at my back: peer evaluation

Easily be blinded, I always need someone to remind me to be discipline. Although I’m kind of aware of my weakness, it’d be always more effective to be told/scolded by someone else than telling myself the truth. On the other hand, it was not fun to point out other’s bad and ugly, but learning from others and improve on myself is beneficial.

Conclusion

It turns out that what I’d expected to learn from this module looks not really similar to what I’ve learned but I have to say I’ve learned much more than I’d expected. Good news is I’ve achieved most of the objectives I set when the module starts. Solving a real life problem, building a mobile app, working in a diversed team. Cool!

Sadly the module is no longer available for next year. Hope the spirit lives on!