Subject: Self Introduction
Dear Professor Brad Blackstone,
I am Ian Marc, a student currently enrolled in your class on effective communication. Given the short time we have together in this module, I am writing to you to introduce myself such that you are able to get to know me better swiftly.
Since young, I had always aspired to be a military pilot for the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF). Therefore, before studying civil engineering at SIT, I studied aviation management at Temasek Polytechnic (TP) as it provided me with an avenue to hopefully turn my dreams into reality. Even though I knew I had taken the right path to pursue my dreams, I was still taken aback when the RSAF offered me with an opportunity to sign on as a pilot. Of course, I accepted their offer and started my training overseas straight after graduating from TP. I did exceptionally well as a pilot trainee initially, flying as high as the sky. Unfortunately, when it came to my final test flight, I failed, and I was out. My dreams were shattered, and on the broken stem of my dreams, disappointment grew. Being resilient, I moved on and I soon found myself pondering on what I should pursue in the future. After much deliberation, I realised that I’ve always had an interest in engineering. This emanated from the influence of my father. We share the same love of figuring out how things work and enjoy repairing or restoring anything we could get our hands on. Often, we would disassemble parts of an object just to put them back together. This passion of mine has led me to enrol in this course.
Regarding my communication skills, my strength is my adept ability to introspect. Personally, I feel that I understand the thoughts and feelings of myself as well as the people that I am communicating with, well and cordially. However, my weakness is that I often find difficulty in either explaining my thoughts and feelings in words, or expressing them in the wrong manner. I hope to improve on this in this module as I strongly believe that for communication to be effective, it comes from not just what we say, but how we say it.
My objective in this module is not just to improve on my weaknesses but to hone
my communication skills as a whole. With my desire to learn, I wholeheartedly
believe that I will improve during our time together. What makes me different is that I always appreciate constructive criticism as I thrive on it. Hence, I would appreciate it if you could be as open
and transparent with me.
Best regards,
Ian Marc
CVE 1281 (T5)
Read: Thomas, Jun Cen, Rynus, Yumeme, Justin
Last Edited: 06 February 2022
Dear Ian,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your letter, through this I was able to get to know you better.
However, there are some points which you could be improved on.
1)You could change 'introduce myself *so* that you are able to get to know me better. (swiftly cancel it away)
2)You could explain more on how you have had appreciated constructive criticism on the last paragraph.
Overall, the content of your letter was very interesting. I look forward to interacting with you!
Best regards,
Lim Jun Cen
Hi Jun Cen,
DeleteThank you for taking the time to read and comment on my blog. I appreciate your feedback and have taken note of it.
I agree with you except with the last part of your first point, where you recommended that I remove the word 'swiftly'. My intention for using the word 'swiftly' is to strengthen my reasoning of writing this letter as I mentioned the time constraints we have in this module. However, in hindsight, I definitely see that I could have structured that sentence better. I will gather more feedback and improve on this in the future.
Thank you once again and see you soon!
Cheers!
Ian Marc
Dear Ian,
ReplyDeleteThe contents of your letter are concise and well written. The flow of your letter is well organised and it captivates me to know more about you. I noticed that some of your sentences in the letter were a bit lengthy. Perhaps you could break off the sentence and start a new one.
< I hope to improve on this in this module as I strongly believe that for communication to be effective, it comes from not just what we say, but how we say it.>
For this sentence, I felt you could have placed a full stop after “effective”. With the help of the full stop, it can create a bigger impact on your reader and captivate them further.
Regardless, I enjoyed your reading your letter. I look forward to knowing you better in class!
Best regards,
Justin Lim
Hi Justin,
DeleteThank you for your kind words and feedback on my letter. I see what you mean when you say some of my sentences are a bit lengthy. I will work on that in my future writings.
Cheers!
Ian Marc
Dear Ian,
ReplyDeleteYour letter has allowed me to gain some insight on your dream and why you are now in the civil engieering course. I saddens me to see that your were not able to be a pilot because of a minor setback and I hope that in the future if you do have a chance to do so, you can still be one.
Overall your letter is very detailed and you have introduced your quite detailedly and I like the flow of it. I think that maybe one point that you can improve on would be splitting your paragraphs and sentences which Justin had mentioned as well. For example in your second paragraph(correct me if I misread your intentions), I feel that a good place to start off another paragraph could be from "Being resilient, ...".
Other than that, your letter was overall pretty well written and I hope to learn more from you while in class as well.
Best regards,
Thomas Ong
Hi Thomas,
DeleteThank you for your kind words and feedback as well. My one true dream is to be the best version of myself and be a positive influence to all. My dream career will work around that. So do not feel bad for me as I have shifted my career ambitions. I now aspire to be the best engineer I can be where I am able to build a sustainable and environmentally friendly world. Nonetheless, my passion for flying will never die and one day, I will get my private pilot's license.
I will work on shortening / splitting my sentences to make my writing more effective. Please do let me know if there is anything else I can improve on in my future writings.
See you soon partner. :)
Cheers!
Ian Marc
Dear Ian,
ReplyDeleteThank you for this clear, succinct and informative letter. You do a good job covering the scope of the assignment brief as you detail your educational background and your flight training experience as well as your engineering study choice and communication skills. It's enriching, in particular, for us to read the reflection about your disappointment with not passing your final pilot test and then how you have moved on from that to your new study focus. It's nice to know how you and your father hold common interests, and your engineering study has bolstered that. Kudos to your resilience.
This letter is also quite fluent, with a fine flow of ideas, though there are a couple language issues to take note of:
1. verb use
-- Since young, I have always aspired to be a military pilot.... > (If the focus is what was once the case, then past perfect may make more sense.) Since young, I had always aspired to be a military pilot....
2. word choice
-- ...my adept ability to introspect myself and others. > (check the meaning of 'introspect.') ?
I look forward to reading more from you this term.
Best wishes,
Brad
Dear Prof. Blackstone,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your compliments and feedback on my post. I have taken note of my language issues that I need to fix and will edit my post before our next tutorial.
Have a great weekend and see you next week. :)
Best regards,
Ian Marc