Initially, I thought that planning out this project would not be very difficult as I had already knew of what I wanted to do since Guided Learning was introduced to us. I knew that I wanted to do something that was related to animal obesity, due to its increasing prevalence and lack of awareness in pet owners; who often brush the issue aside in light of "loving" for their pets.

However, with COVID-19, my initial plan to host a live talk at a public event could not be carried out. When suggested by my mentor to host a web seminar instead, I was initially skeptic of the idea as I did not think that many students would be interested in watching a web seminar, however in the end I decided that it was a good platform to disseminate my message. I also decided to change my topic from animal obesity in general to specifically canine obesity, because while researching, I realized that a lot of resources I have gotten information from are specific to only dogs, and eve if obesity is prevalent in more species of pets, dogs are the most common household pets in Singapore. Additionally, I felt that I would be able to focus more on a specific topic instead of the talk becoming too general, and thus I chose to narrow my scope to focus on this particular issue. Thus, I had more to plan than I had anticipated, so it did not go as well as I had expected.

Still, as someone who likes to make plans, I did not have much trouble delegating time or following the plan, and even being flexible to the changes that had to be made, thus the plan I had written in the learning contract had proved to be useful. Reflecting on how the project went and the goals that I have set to achieve was a constant process in order to ensure that my goals were met by the end of this project.

This was the stage where I had to do what I said; which is carry out everything that I have planned in the above stage.

Of course, it was not easy to get started as it seemed to be such a daunting task, however I slowly started to get used to balancing my assignments and tests with carrying out the project, as well as following the tasks I had set to complete each week.

The first task I completed was doing my literature review, in which I managed to learn a lot more about the topic of canine obesity through doing a lot of research. Reading through the papers started to be a very difficult task, however I found a lot of enjoyment after I started to see how the information I had learnt really ties back into the purpose of my project; which is to educate audiences on the topic of canine obesity. I learnt that pet owners and client information play a huge part in helping to prevent obesity, thus it was helpful to have read and collated these information for use during my presentation preparations as well,

After summarizing the points that I gathered from reading countless articles, I also started on doing my questionnaires for the veterinarians and young pet owners in Singapore. This was to gather information on what different groups of people felt about the topic currently, such that I gained a better understanding of my audience. I did not have much difficulty with this segment as I came up with the questions easily, having done up and outline and draft questions, however disseminating the survey was difficult as I had to email many animal clinics, and ultimately got very little respondents as well; to the point I had decided not to use the survey's results. With the pet owners' survey, I managed to get more respondents by spreading my survey through friends, thus I was quite happy with the result.

Then, I decided to start on the presentation portion of the talk and thus I signed myself up for a public speaking course online. I learnt many things through the course, one being the importance of rehearsal and learning to analyse an audience and etc., which I felt to be very useful. With that, I started to prepare for my talk with slides and script. I rehearsed and recorded myself many times, gathering feedback from my friends and mentors, which was quite frightening, however I understood its importance as they often pointed out certain things that I would have never thought of otherwise. I was still quite nervous about speaking to an audience, however after much preparation and listening to a lot of my friends'and mentors feed backs, along with rehearsals almost everyday, I had felt a lot more confident in my abilities to present. The presentation underwent some last minute changes, however I am proud to say that I was not too phased despite initial reluctance, and managed to carry out the actual talk.

When the time came to present, everything went smoothly, except for one thing. In my nervousness, I did not realize that my output audio had been turned off, which meant that I could not hear my audience should they have spoken; which thankfully none of them did, as it would have been very serious if I were to be ignoring my audience. However, there was an audience member who had been sneezing throughout the entire presentation, and he had apparently been messaged by many of the other audience members to turn off his microphone as they could not hear me speaking well. I made the mistake of assuming that everyone stayed silent and did not mute my audience, which is something I will definitely take note of to check in the future should I present for similar events.

Overall, I did not have much difficulty monitoring the project as I was following the plan that I had written as well as using the Milestones progress report to keep track of my pace.

It was a back and forth process between monitoring my performance and improving on it, before monitoring it yet again. The process did get a little tiring at times as I had to constantly go back and forth, seeking feedback and advice from various people. Nevertheless, it was a very exciting process as I was able to talk to people I would never have talked to otherwise; such as the two animal nutritionists that I have learnt a lot from. I was also given good feedback on how to engage my audience better and send my message across, thus I felt that this was indeed an important phase in the project, as exhausting as it was.

However, if there was one thing I needed to improve on, it was that I did not publicize the talk well enough and also did not complete the feedback survey in time for it to be released right after the talk had ended. I did not make a feedback survey and only did so right after the talk, and thus I could not guarantee the rate of response and only half the number who attended my talk did the post-presentation survey. Thus in the future, I would definitely take note to do feedback surveys before the talk such that they can be disseminated right after.

Overall, this entire project has been an interesting journey from start to end.

I felt that the planning and monitoring stages went well as I was able to allocate my time well to begin with, and thus did not have to make any changes throughout the following weeks as I did the project. The monitor stages also went pretty well because I liked constantly receiving feedback regarding my talk progress as well as reviewing my current progress, to see where I am with my project and how I can improve from there.

I had achieved my learning goals of becoming more self-directed, developing character and citizenship, as well as communication and collaborative skills. I have become more self-directed since I had to do a majority of this project on my own, which is something I had never done before. Initially it felt a little frightening to be thrown into this project and not know how and where to start, however it got easier after laying down a plan and just getting started on it. I developed my character and citizenship skills through organizing this web seminar for the dog owners around me and in my school community, in learning how to reach out to and educate the public on this issue. I also learnt to be more communicative with others, such as through reaching out to mentors as well as animal nutritionists from the US in order to gain feedback and acquire new information regarding the subject, and also the target audience to understand the local scene better.

However, what did not go so well was the perform stage, especially in regards to the final presentation. I felt that I could have definitely tried harder to disseminate information regarding the talk, as there was only 15 people in attendance, as well as 20 people who RSVP-ed for the talk, which is not a very large number. Additionally, I am still disappointed that I had accidentally muted the output sound on my computer and not the microphones of the audience members during the talk, as I think it was a really careless mistake however nervous I was.

If I had the chance to redo this project, I would definitely try to have more confidence and post information about my talk more so that more people can learn about this issue, as well as ensure that all microphones are on mute (and that mine is not) so that the audience members would be able to hear me clearly. Still, I am glad to have pushed my boundaries in regards to public speaking as I am now less afraid of it then I was before.

I am thankful for this opportunity to have carried out this project and hope to do something similar in the future.