POST INTERNSHIP // DROWNING IN PAPER BITS & VELCRO CONFETTI

A large part of my time last year and early this year was spent on my Internship & FYP at the Dyslexia Association of Singapore (DAS). Despite being in Child Psychology & Early Education, I've minimal first hand experience volunteering/being in organizations or centers which cater to children with special needs hence I was indeed thankful for having the opportunity to intern at DAS. 

After spending 4 months in DAS, it has definitely broaden my horizons in terms of Dyslexia and helping children with dyslexia. One of my biggest regrets is not being able to go through training like my seniors and have experience teaching children with dyslexia. Because of the job scope given to my groupmates & I, we also had little exposure and contact with the children and other teachers to find out more about the difficulties children, parents & teachers faced individually.

But of course, as the saying goes "when one door closes, another opens". Despite not having much exposure in that aspect, we were given the opportunity to create materials which I personally hope will benefit the children and aid teachers' teaching in a long run. And that they've kept to their words of piloting our kit in the next few years.

I was under the "Reseach & Development" team (though there isn't one to begin with) so my groupmates & I were very lucky to have the freedom and flexibility to really experiment and have our ideal product happen. Countless of hours coming up with ideas, brainstorming, researching, looking for inspiration till we finally came up with our very first raw draft.

In the last few weeks of internship just before our final presentation, we were racing against time to put together our internship video, mass printing the cards, boards and guide book. After all was done, I took a big step back and look at the entire 12 kits we made, I just stood there in awe with my jaws wide open &; thought to myself "I must be dreaming, did we really created all that from scratch?" We did, we really did it. I'm extremely proud of myself and my groupmates because who knew that we really achieved our dream outcome and definitely didn't settle for anything less. 

I love every single component, design & detail of the kit. However, the one closest to my heart & what I call my "baby" will be the teacher's user guide because I did that 130 plus pages from scratch on my own. Of course, with the contents of the book from my groupmates too! But I never knew that I possessed rather good designing skills hahaha *pats self on the back

I've watched the internship video countless of times & there were a mixture of bittersweet yet raw emotions inside my heart. There couldn't be a bigger pay off from this experience. The sleepless nights, the super late OTs, rushing from center to center, walking under the heat to source for printing shops, making many trips to popular, art friend & spotlight, countless of meetings which made us brain dead each time, debates about our product, having to pilot it across centers, feeling so bad hogging the printers all the time, taking countless of videos and photos for the book and instructional video & not forgetting our all time favourite - cutting & laminating.

Boy are those memories deeply etched in my mind and heart. But in any case, I wouldn't trade them for anything. 

Honestly wished that I could share the video with you all but due to privacy issues etc, I can't :( 

I remembered being very nervous yet also excited to be able to share our kit with the panel & was anticipating their "WOW THATS GOOD STUFF" looks on their faces. Was immensely thankful for my mentor & the director was taking time out to sit in our presentation and also helping us during Q &A which was a big shocker. I mean, which mentor actually interrupts Q & A to help the mentees? Hehe ours did. Yay DAS! I was wearing a huge grin on my face during towards the end of presentation and Q&A because it meant that we were this close to the finishing line. It was overrrrrrrr.

To be completely honest, we wouldn't be able to come this far, do this much, push boundaries and challenge ourselves if not for the support and guidance of our mentor and director especially. BEST SUPERVISORS EVERRRRR!

Another experience gained, another memory created, many valuable lessons learnt, new friendships forged & of course, all these elements played a big part in helping me grow and learn as a leader and an individual.

XX.