My name is Megan, and I am a senior majoring in Information Systems. Before taking this course, all I wanted to do is to just find a course that allows me to challenge myself. In the past three years of college, although I did find some courses challenging, most of them are me learning about new information; instead of me using what I learned. During the first class, after hearing the professor’s explanation of what this course will be like, I felt nervous but excited at the same time. I felt there is finally a course where I can use what I learned in a real-life scenario and see what do I still need to improve.
One of the main takeaways that I have is the ability to maintain a good relationship with my teammates and manage time with each other. Although most of the courses I took have group projects where we have to work together, this is the first time I have ever taken a course where the project a semester-long. This allows me to gain time management skills and skills when communicating with people in the real world. In this course, we need to contact the clients on our own, and we need to learn the fact that not everyone has the time to follow our schedule. We need to find a way to make things work.
We immediately encountered some problems at the beginning of the project. We were very confused about the scope of the project and to find the pain points. All we did is keep on researching and hoping that the things we researched could be used in some ways. We were probably the last group to decide the final topic that we will be doing. However, after talking with the professor, the mentor, and the client, we finally got to a point where we know what we will be doing for our project. I must admit I feel kind of miserable in the beginning because I did not know what we were doing. A lot of research that we did end up not going to our final project.
Another takeaway that I have is project management skills. This is the biggest project that I have ever done in my college life. We need to start from the beginning to the end and work with the client all by ourselves. I think I not only gained better time management skills but also the ability to communicate with teammates and also the client. I feel like in today’s world, people need to communicate with each other a lot for things to work, including sending emails. This course has helped me to manage my relationships with other people. We learned to listen to other people’s opinions and learn how to not stick to one’s opinion when others opposed it. For us to work this out efficiently, communication is key, but also the flexibility is very important.
I learned a lot in this course, mainly on things that I will encounter when I graduated and go into the working field. I felt lucky to be able to experience this even before I graduated. I knew things may be even more complicated in the future, but at least I have the preparation on facing those problems.