Can you communicate?

I'd like to think I didn't have any problems socially, or with presenting myself professionally. Last week there was an FYP meeting in which the student NSS questions were put to us. Mr Clarke seemed confused as to why 'communication skills' and 'presenting yourself with confidence' were marked low.

In my opinion, throughout my university life I haven't done enough presentations. I have done one for PD15 which, lets be honest here, how many people put the effort in (it was first year, after all). The same goes for communicating with people in other disciplines about technical issues. I think it is pivotal that someone at the 'computing' level can at least bring there knowledge down to a level that presumes the person listening knows a thing or two about 'IT'. 

The problem is that these two things aren't pushed. No one is taken out of their comfort zone in the final year. Why not make 5% of distributed systems a team task. Force people to work together and perhaps create a small solution working with people from other departments? Yes that sounds difficult but if the school isn't prepared to try it why do they deserve 5/5. They don't in my opinion.

The same goes for presentation skills. Apparently one of PD31s complaints from the previous year was no presentations. So they removed it, due to it being convenient that web science would take up half of the module in our year. I believe the only reason people complained was due to them being put in a position that wasn't quite comforting. But really it's what they needed for the big wide world out there.

I personally have no issue communicating with someone or presenting. In industry ive presented to CEOs at board level for around an hour. So ten minutes is too little if anything.

I would have give them 3/5 for bother criteria. I just think for a perfect mark they could do more. And Compsoc is optional, I don't think it counts.

On the job front

Last Wednesday I spoke to my old boss in America. He seemed pleased to hear from me and may have some work in project management of health systems implementation. I also expressed an interest in test engineering, as the position seemed to have a small amount of coding along with many different tasks as well as being able to communicate with the people that needed the system. Something I think I could do very well.

I have another call with him on Wednesday, which may be a big step in determining my future.

Fingers crossed.

Exams are over. Let the next phase begin

Reading my last blog I realise how bad it was in terms of how much of a rant I was having. I guess Christmas was so dissapointing because of the pressure ahead. 

I'm so glad to know that for the last time, I am through the January exams. Four of them went well and it would have been five had not been for that ridiculous time limit on the joint professional development and web science module. Something I think Roger and Pete badly midjudged, and I hope it will be rectified considering that my post morterm gave me the confidence to say I had scored 30/100. O dear. It's a good job those coursework marks were 80% combined.

My favourite module last semester was certainly distributed systems. Karim had not only the theortical but also practical knowledge (you knew he had written code, unlike lecturers such as Lydia). It made me think about distributed systems and the way the industry is going today, something I find very interesting is cloud computing and the possibility of operating systems themselves exisiting in the 'cloud'.

On from them. I'm also happy that this Wednesday I will be speaking with Sonny. My old boss at Pathology Associates Medical Laboratories (PAML) in Spokane, USA. I am hoping he has some good news for me.

Today I have been lazy and nursing a hangover. Tomorrow I plan on putting in a few job applications with small health IT companies and catching up on reading. Especially my Obama book that I have barely touched since Christmas due to the constant revision. I also want to really crack on with my FYP too.

I guess that's it for now. Not much to report, unless I told you about all my knowledge of the five modules ive just been studying like crazy.

Oh and happy new year (though late now)!