Blog post #6: Biodata

I am currently a NUS undergraduate from Science faulty, majoring in Chemistry. Being a disciplined and scientific person, I am interested in doing experiments and exploring new things. By taking up Diploma in Industrial Chemistry at Singapore Polytechnic in 2003, I have gain a lot of hands on experiences in this area. I obtained an A grade during my attachment in a German fragrance and cosmetic company. In the process, I had learned how to do stability testing on fragrance products like shampoos, shower creams, etc. In addition to that, I got to do basic composition of cologne/perfumes, and research on how long the fragrances on the products could last, etc. In my final year project in Polytechnic, it had enriched my research skills and enabled me to me more organised and rational.

Blog post #5: Reflecting on the Research Project

In the process of coming up with the research report, my group had encountered a few problems; one of it was the online survey. There were few limitations to our survey, like keeping our respondents to be Year 2 and above, who had the experience of staying on-campus or currently staying on-campus. With no response from the faculties’ in-charge in helping us to send mass email, the number of responses collected was not quite ideal. For the first 3 days, there were only 19 responses obtained.

Immediate response was to ask around for solutions from other groups, to see what they had done. My group then came up with the solution of mass emailing by using our student’s email accounts. We selected students from faculties and year of study to achieve random sampling. After I had sent the mass email out to the students, the number of responses had increased significantly. However, in the mid, there were some problems with our website. Some students feedback to me that they were not able to visit the website. Thus, I sent a second email out to the same batch of students, in response to the problem. Upon receiving too many emails from me, some of the students felt irritated. They complained about stuffs like ‘flooding their mailbox’ or ‘hoping me to take out his/her name out from the mailing list’. Regardless of all these, the online survey was still a success as it had met our target number.

In the process of doing up the report, I had gained many positive learning experiences. One of it was like dealing with the problem above. In this case, maintaining a good interpersonal relationship is very important, without the solutions given by other groups’ members; my group may not be able to meet the target of responses.