A one-of-a-kind journey

by Grace Ng (SMU)

The saying goes – “The most valuable thing you can make is a mistake – you can’t learn anything from being perfect.”

What I’ve learnt in this course is that perfection is simply not attainable and it shouldn’t be yearned for. In a hypothetical world whereby everyone is perfect and things turn out exactly the way we want, there would be no learning curve for anybody.

My revelation came when I had to work in a huge group with people of differing opinions and different working styles. Different expectations for the course further complicated things. Juxtapose these; it was a step of exploration into the unknown world of opportunities as well as trials.

Being young and inexperienced, the group had to find various ways to approach potential people we can work with. The daunting task started with tons of cold calling and talking to people, and this was no mean feat as we were unimportant to them. Leads usually run into dead ends with the hanging up of a phone call and we had difficulty sourcing for suppliers and investors. In addition, as a nobody, we had to beef our name with assurances of trustworthiness and promises of reliability in order to gain their confidence.

A learning point from this course would be the importance of networking and connecting with the right people. It would have been a more romantic journey as we would have been able to talk to people capable of making decisions instead of talking to receptionists and random assistants who promised to call back but didn’t.

Given another chance, I would choose to do everything all over again because I’ve learnt so much in a brief 13 weeks. I’ve learnt to set differences aside to get work done and focus on individual’s positive traits instead of poring over their minute flaws.

I really appreciate the opportunity to work with a fantastic bunch of people. In addition, Prof Pamela Lim had imbued knowledge that textbooks cannot teach and lessons we cannot learn in traditional classrooms. This inimitable journey is truly matchless, disparate from other modules that I’ve took.

In summary, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”