As I approach the end of this term (term 2, year 1), I realize that one of the courses that has impacted and transformed my life this term was C4S. In this blog article, I will publicly reflect on what my learning experience has been so far and how you can get the most out of the course. Before I begin this journey, let me provide a brief description of myself.

Who am I?

My name is Ohachor Victor, one of the founding students of the Kibo School of Technology. Before Kibo, I was a software engineering student at ALX-Holberton, which meant that I joined Kibo with some technical background.

Before Kibo, I always had communication issues. It wasn’t about starting a conversation; it was about keeping the conversation going. I could start a proper conversation if I wanted, though I don’t like starting them, and I usually felt very uncomfortable after a few minutes.

In short, I always hated communication that exceeded a few minutes. When communication involves collaboration on a project or task, I find it very easy to blend in, but the same is not true about communication involving friendships or connections.

You can easily tell that I needed a course like C4S to reshape me into a good communication vessel.

What is C4S?

C4S stands for "cause for singing." I’m kidding. It stands for Communicating for Success and builds upon a previous course I offered last term called “Optimizing Your Learning."

While optimizing your learning focuses on making you a self-directed learner, communicating for success teaches you to be a good communicator in both speech and ink.

You learn to:

• Effectively read and understand written communications.

• Create and structure written documents to enhance your audience's understanding.

• Apply listening and speaking techniques to help improve your communication skills.

• Become a better writer.

If you find this article easy to comprehend and entertaining, thank C4S for making me a better communicator.

What Has C4S Taught Me?

Don’t get me started on this one. I hope I won’t spend the rest of my life answering this question, but I will give it a try.

Remember when I said I was that type of person who hates spoken communication that takes more than a couple of minutes because he finds it draining?

Recently, I became aware of the importance of spoken communication. If I want to have a successful career, I should be a good communicator.

For ten weeks, I went from being that guy who despises long conversations to someone who can handle them with little brain drain.

Thanks to C4S, I've developed into a self-directed learner who can easily communicate ideas. What is more? Let's dive into some of the specifics of what I have discovered so far.

The first step to becoming a better writer is reading. I learned how to read well and also learned about some techniques to become better and faster at reading.

I didn't realize how effective skimming was reading until after the first week of class, and I've been using it ever since.

Furthermore, I learned how to write better using the writing process. Before C4S, every piece of writing I did was done in one big step. I paid little or no attention to the writing process and ended up with a product that didn't perfectly capture my thoughts.

Ever since I learned about the writing process, I have found that the quality of my writing has improved. To be honest, I'm still getting used to the writing process because it can be tedious at times, but the quality of my work always reflects my efforts.

The writing process is a five-step process. The steps in the process include:

1. Planning – The goal of this step is to clarify the purpose of your writing, determine your audience, and gather the information that will help you support your purpose.

2. Structuring – This entails deciding on the organizational structure you want to give your writing to achieve the stated purpose for the chosen audience.

3. Drafting – I learned here that every piece of writing is a project. Which means that you are never expected to get it right the first time. The goal of this step is to create your first draft.

4. Revising – This involves evaluating your draft to see if your intended goal is achieved and the organizational structure was accomplished. If it isn’t, you can revise the content until it does. Also, I learned that revising is not the same as editing. While revising focuses on high-level concerns, editing focuses on low-level concerns such as grammar and the correct use of punctuation.

5. Editing and Proofreading – This step finalizes your text by eliminating any remaining errors.

C4S also introduced me to the 7Cs of communication, which I used throughout the term for every assignment I did. Using the 7Cs of communication framework, I evaluated the text for each assignment to determine whether my thoughts or ideas were effectively communicated.

Here is a video I created that dwells on the 7Cs of communication.

For each step of the writing process, we spend a week diving deeper into it, uncovering more information about it, and applying it to our writing project. That way, we slowly got better at writing.

Though oral communication and written communication are two very popular means of communication, there are also other types of communication I came across towards the end of the course. They include:

1. Vocalics: Vocalized non-verbal components of speech i.e. any sound uttered through the lips that is not a word.

2. Kinesics: Body movements and posture. Always remember that your body language is also studied by others during communication.

3. Haptics: Touch behaviours that convey meaning, such as hand holding and so on.

Finally, to become an effective communicator, you must be an effective listener. According to C4S, “listening is a learned process of receiving, interpreting, recalling, evaluating, and responding to verbal and nonverbal messages."

I could write an entire blog post about these five action steps that comprise listening.

What Were My Goals at the Start of C4S?

Since goal setting is a learning strategy (the planning stage), I had to set a goal before I started the C4S class. If you have read the above text, you should be able to figure out what my goal was at the start of the course.

I had only one goal in mind: to improve my communication skills in both speaking and writing. It was with this goal that I faced C4S. Let's backtrack a little…

In OYL (Optimizing Your Learning), we were taught how to set SMART goals because they were easier and more realistic to accomplish. With this knowledge, let me introduce the SMART version of the goal above:

By the end of the term, develop into an individual who can communicate effectively and write confidently and professionally using at least half of the tools and techniques covered in class.

Did I Accomplish My Goals and How?

Yes, I accomplished my goal! How?

1. I took the grammar Bootcamp that started every week seriously because my writing must be grammatically correct to be professional.

2. I believed that learning ought to be fun. Because I loved poems, I dedicated more time to writing poems, where I integrated some of what I learned every week.

For this purpose, I used the knowledge I acquired from the Web Application Development course to create a web application.

One thing I noticed with this was that over time, my poems got better. The more I learned, the better I became at communicating my thoughts.

1. In addition, I paid closer attention to the structure of other people's writing and attempted to understand its strengths and weaknesses. I then took what I had learned and applied it to my writing.

2. I became more active in conversations. It didn’t work out well at first because I stuttered most of the time due to nervousness. But, I became better at it each week.

I am not a perfect communicator—in fact, I see more flaws all the time—but I have grown over the past few weeks into a better communicator than I once was before I started the course.

What was the greatest Challenge I Faced in C4S?

My greatest challenge was completing the course materials on time. As a result, I frequently submit my assignments late, though some events that played around me also influenced this.

What was My Key Takeaway from the Course?

The "flowers paradigm" that I came across when I was introduced to writing as a process was my key takeaway. It opened my eyes and made me see writing from a different but comprehensive perspective.

Betty S. Flowers created the "flowers paradigm," which was used as an analogy to explain what happens in a writer's brain during a writing project. Also, I found the solution to writer’s block in that paradigm. To learn more about it, check out this article.

With an understanding of this paradigm, I appreciated writing projects that clearly communicated the writer’s thoughts and ideas because they were able to share the load equally among the "madman," "architect,” “carpenter,” and the "judge."

What Advice Do I Leave to Prospective Students?

Note that C4S is not for the weak. Hence, if you are going to get the most out of the course, study the materials thoroughly. Not all the materials are to be consumed rigorously; some can be skimmed initially and revisited when needed.

To avoid being penalized by point reduction, complete your assignments on time. I was a victim of this.

Also, you must put to use what you learn; otherwise, you will forget it.

Conclusion

“The world of writing is a beautiful place, where creativity is expressed in the sun and professionalism wets the ground with showers of rain," says Victor Ohachor.

You, like me, can learn to communicate for success.

Thanks for reading; in the meantime, you can read this poem that I composed for the Kibo family.