CE51402-4-LFS-L Joydeep Bhattacharya TP054326

REPORT

REFLECTIVE PORTFOLIO
AND
DEBATE REPORT

LEARNING FOR SUCCESS

CE51402-4-LFS

HAND OUT DATE: 10th September 2019 (Week 2)

HAND IN DATE: 31th January 2020 (Week 14)

WEIGHTAGE: 50%

NAME : JOYDEEP BHATTACHARYA TP054326

INTAKE CODE : APT1F1904BIT

MODULE CODE : CE51402-4-LFS

ASSIGNMENT : INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT

LECTURER : MOHD NAJIB BIN ISMAIL

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Abstract

The first step towards becoming successful in life is to set our goals properly. Our goals must
be relevant, actionable, realistic and achievable. When we initiate the process of goal setting,
we have automatically taken a significant step towards achieving our personal reflection and
self-discipline in life. In this assignment we have identified our short-term and long-term
goals in life. We have also pointed out our reflection that we have gathered from valuable
experiences in life. We have listed out some skills that we learnt from those experiences.
Lastly, we have made some strategies that will help us to achieve our goals in life within a set
timeframe. We have also made timetable of our daily routine in MindGenius software that
will help us to reach our targets and become successful in life.

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction……………………………………………….……………………..…….4
2. Personal Goals
(a) Short-Term Goals…………………….………………….………………….…….5
(b) Long-Term Goals………………………………….……………………..……….6
3. Reflective Essay on life
(a) Memorable Incidences in my life…………………………………………………7
(b) My reflections on life……………………………………………………...…..…
11
(c) Skills learned from
experiences………………………………………………….13
4. Strategies for achieving goals
(a) List of strategies for seeking my target…………………………………….
…….14
5. Conclusion for Portfolio……………..………………….…………...……...………..19
6. Introduction………………………………………………………………..…………20
7. Debate Points with proper reasoning……………………………………………..…..21
8. Conclusion for Debate Report……………………………………………………......25
9. References……………………………………………………………………………26

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Introduction

Every people have some sort of goal in their life irrespective of the strata they belong from.
The main objective of setting our goal is to help us define the future we want. We will
pointlessly leave our lives if we cannot set our goals properly. In our life we should definitely
experience both success and failure so that we can learn from them and move ahead in life
without repeating the same ones as before. We should instil self- discipline and eliminate our
bad habits so that we can achieve our goals within the set timeframe in life. We develop also
a sense of moral value and ethics within us when we achieve our goals. Goals also help us to
remain focused on what we believe is important in our life. We should also implement
strategies to achieve goals in a less complex manner. We should also give importance to life
reflection i.e. the experiences from certain incidences as they enable us to learn from our
faults and to apply what we have learned in our future endeavour life.

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Personal Goals

There are so many aspects of life where successful goal-making is needed to attain success,
health, productivity, projects, and relationships. Goals are set by people based on a short term
or long-term basis. Some specific goals can take years to accomplish while others take a short
period like a week or a month to achieve. Hence goals serve us by motivating reminding and
monitoring us as we desperately need to improve ourselves to become successful in life.
As a University Student, at 26 years old, I am in the beginning to understand the benefits of
goal setting beforehand. One of the goals that I set in my Diploma days was to get admission
to Asia Pacific University, Malaysia. And I hit that goal by getting an offer letter from the
University. Now I am studying BSc (Hons) Business Information Technology at Asia Pacific
University. I have set my short-term goal of passing my current semester i.e. the second
semester with a grade point average (GPA) higher than 3.8. Another short-term goal that I
have set in my initial days of University life is to learn a foreign language (French) and
achieve a DALF certificate of that. I have also set the time duration for achieving this goal. I
must complete and achieve this goal is not more than six (6) months. I also have a goal of
getting an Internship in a good Multinational Company (MNC) so that I have more practical
and real-world experience than my peers before I graduate from University. This can also be
counted as one of my short-term goals.
A long-term goal that I very passionate about is getting distinction and more than 3.7 in my
cumulative grade point average (CGPA). This will almost ensure a lot of job offers once I
graduate from Asia Pacific University (APU). Apart from graduating with a good CGPA, I
would also like to attain financial stability in my personal life so that I can leave a healthy
and long life without any tensions. It's something that I never saw in my parents, as both were
from the working class who had struggled a lot with debts and other financial hardships. I
need to get a good-paying job so that I can have financial freedom in my life where I am not
afraid of financial instability. Achieving financial stability, getting a high paying job or
graduating from University with high CGPA is not everything in life. We need people in our
lives to love and who can provide meaning to our life. One of the Long-term goals is to find
the right person in my life so that I can have a wonderful and loving family who will always
be by my side when I will be old, weak and weary.

There is a famous quote on Goals given by Tony Robbins which states "Setting
goals is the first step in turning the invisible into visible" This shows us that
setting our goals beforehand could benefit us at every point of our life and in
any aspect of it. The most important point of goal setting is that it helps people
become a better version of themselves Setting goals works and is a life-long
practice used by many successful people all around the globe.

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Reflective Essay on life

Reflection on Completing 1 year in Asia Pacific University as a Student

I have been a student at Asia Pacific University (APU), Malaysia for 2 semesters, and over
the course of my stay, I have grown and learned more than I thought possible. I had taken
numerous Technical courses before and though I knew exactly what I was headed for, I was
completely wrong. Going through the Business Information Technology (BIT) program
which has taught me so much more than the regular stuff on Technology and Management, it
has taught me how to be me. I have learned here how to write and express myself, how to
think for myself, and how to find the answers to the things that I don't know. Most
importantly I have learned how important technology and Management are in our day to day
life.
When I started at Asia Pacific University (APU), I thought I was going to spend the next 3
years reading about current technology and management, discussing them and then writing
about them. That was what I did in my previous University where I achieved my Diploma
from, so I didn't think it would be much different here. On the surface, to an outsider, I am
sure that this is what it appears that Asia Pacific University Business Information Technology
(BIT) majors do. At first, I thought reading, discussing lecture slides are enough to get a good
understanding of the subject but eventually understood that there was so much more to learn
apart from the slides provided by our lecturers. So, I wanted to learn and have a real-time IT
Industry experience. So, I and some of my friends decided to have an industrial visit of an
Indian IT Company based in Kuala Lumpur rather than only writing assignments and reading
notes for Business System Analysis Design and Construction (BSAD). In the Industrial
Training to compare the working and software developing procedures of that company to a
book written by Sherman Alexie. The experience was far more interesting and valuable than
writing an Assignment. This showed us how complex things can be learned in a fun yet
educational manner
I know that my ability to write and express my ideas, thoughts, and knowledge has grown
stronger each semester. I have always struggled to put my thoughts on paper in a manner that
is coherent and correct according to assignments. I can remember being told numerous times
in my previous University to "organize my thoughts" or "provide more support and
examples". These are the things that I have worked on and improved over the past year and I
feel that my work shows this. The assignments I wrote when I first started here at Asia
Pacific University (APU) were bland and short. In these early assignments, I would just
restate what we learned in class and what I had found in my research. I did not formulate my
ideas and support them with the works of others. The classes I have taken the last semester
have to help me shed that bad habit and write better assignments and papers with better ideas.
I have learned how to write various styles of papers in different forms and different fields. I
feel confident that I could write an assignment and express my feeling to all.

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Reflections on Organizing an Event in University

Another incident from which I gathered a lot of valuable lessons that helped me to become
successful in my future endeavour of my life was organizing a Gaming lounge cum food stall
in our University. In the second semester of our bachelor's degree, we are assigned to take
part in the co-curriculum module as a requirement by the university. This time the students
were assigned the task to raise funds by conducting various types of activities. Our stall
which was named "Games and Grubs corner" had a variety of food and games. The main aim
of this event was to gain valuable learning experience that would be helpful for us as we go
ahead in our career as well as day to day life.
We the students of the co-curriculum module created a group of 15 members. It comprised of
people from different courses, distinct background, different culture, and country. It was a
whole new experience that was going to play an important role in shaping the future of our
young minds. This event in whole taught me that irrespective of the differences, we need to
be able to get together and work as a team. As we all were working as a team, we had a lot of
ideas. Since we worked as a team, we were able to delegate the task to each member of the
team. I was given the role of Assistant project manager therefore in the absence of my senior
I managed to communicate and handle all the necessary procedures to smoothly carry on the
event. I had to coordinate with the other team members to make sure that everything was in
place and it gave me a new exposure to lead a huge team without letting the burden to
overtake mental withstanding power. This teamwork will be necessary when we go into the
cooperate world as we need to deal with people and able to understand their requirements.
Secondly, this project also taught me a lot on marketing skills. Once I learned this, it helped
me increase the visibility of our stall. It also helped me to develop a good relationship with
our customers and create a healthy brand image. This gave me a greater picture of how these
people apply communicative skills in their business for day to day sales. Marketing is an
important skill and if you can understand it well it can be an important asset for the company.
This skill also helped me to become more aware of the things going on around us as it also
helps us learn the industry in a better way. I can give a good example of this as I witnessed
this during our event as we had competitors whom we had to tackle by performing better than
them and by focusing on the same audience as they did. This was a great experience and I
learned a lot from this event.
An African proverb that I think is suitable for this scenario is, “If you want to go quickly, go
alone. If you want to go far, go together.” I used to think it was an indictment of the solitary
runner who wanted to go quickly until I realized that speed and distance are morally neutral
objectives. There are times when we need to go fast and there are times when we need to go
far. Teamwork was one of the most important aspects of this Curriculum which involved
Event Organizing. We would have been unable to accomplish anything if we had not worked
together. Even though the whole team was divided into subgroups, we often consulted with
one another when we ran into difficulties with our work. Hence, we were able to run our

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Lounge successfully for a week and achieve our primary objective to make a minimum profit
of RM350 while keeping the prices of our food quite reasonable because we worked as a
single team rather than a small sub-team. In our Team, we were fifteen members coming
from different courses, distinct backgrounds, different cultures, and countries. We kept our
differences aside and was able to perish in a difficult time by staying together and helping
each other when any member of our group needed help. This created a sense of unity &
brotherhood among us that will never break even in the darkest hour in our life. In
conclusion, this event taught me how to work in real-life situation and with the help of all the
members working in unity we managed to achieve the target and it taught me a lot of fruitful
lessons that I can use one day in my future. This also instilled values such as truthfulness,
kindness, and passion which is necessary while dealing with people. Overall it was good
exposure for me.
Some of the Reflections that I have gathered from these incidences in my life are given
below: -

 Don’t Compromise our own values for someone else : - We should not
compromise our core values for the sake of anyone as our values define who we are as
a person. It shows that we lack integrity and fortitude if we easily give up our own
values for someone. We should understand that no one is worth abandoning our
values for.
 Follow our heart: - We should always follow our heart as there is no other
purpose in life than living life itself. When we follow our heart all our dreams, goals
and desires follow it. Our professional and personal problems restrict us to follow our
heart. An initiative should be taken by us so that we can do what we like or dream of
rather than becoming pressurized by other’s and society’s expectation.
 Be wise how and where to spend money : - We should be very careful before
investing in something. Analyse and understand the future scope so that we can invest
on something that is actually fruitful for us. We should keep our health well as it is
directly related to the money we invest in life. We should be impulsive before sending
money on things that are not important for us.
 Don’t be money oriented: - While money is necessity for many basic things, we
should stop prioritizing money from our hobbies and passions. We should stop
comparing ourselves with other and avoid materialism. Self-esteem does not come
before money. We should also stop being jealous on others and be happy of what we
have in our life.
 Celebrate achievements in life: - We should enjoy our life and live our life
passionately. We should celebrate small achievement that we achieve in our life so
that we get motivated in the long run of achieving some big goals in life. Celebrating
our small achievements activates the reward circuitry of our brains.

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Some of the skills that I have gained through these valuable incidences
in my life are listed below: -

 Teamwork.
 Commitment.
 Self-Reflection.
 Time management like drawing Gantt Chart for our goals.
 Proper ethics.
 Social service.
 Developing a timeline.
 Innovative.
 Determination.
 Coordination.
 Becoming a true all-rounder.
 Learn new languages like Bahasa Melayu and Mandarin.
 Teamwork.
 Marketing Skills.
 Conflict Resolution Skills.
 Communicative Skills.
 Sense of unity & brotherhood.

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Strategies

Everyone has goals in life. Some of our goals can be Long-termed basis and some can be a
short-termed basis. Irrespective of that, we all want to achieve those goals in our life. But
achieving these goals in life isn't easy and need well-planned strategies to achieve them. It is
not about just having clearly defined personal goals in life but to implement the right
strategies which make all these less complex or intricate task. It requires consistent and
persistent actions to achieve these goals that we have set in our life. We must endure a
tremendous amount of pain and struggle today so that we can reap the rewards tomorrow.
If we can have the right approach towards our goal with the right frame of mind, we can
easily achieve those goals. We will have to learn how to navigate around the hurdles by
implementing the correct plans and strategies to be successful in the long term. We should
know that a big goal cannot be achieved overnight. We can also not achieve big goals within
a stipulated timeframe that we have set. We must learn how not to relent on failures and keep
our target still in spite of all the difficulties that we will face in life.
Some of the strategies that I have sketched down that will help me to achieve the goals that I
have set in life are given below: -

 Creating a plan of action: - One of the most important strategies associated

with the achievement of any goals is proper planning. But most of us fail to create
detailed plains on how to conquer our goals. The abstract notion that we have in our
minds regarding our goals will not help us to achieve them. To bring our goals into
fruition we should create a detailed action plan and work daily on it---every single day
without fail to achieve our goal.
 Setting Smarter goals: - We should set our goals that are specific, measurable,
achievable, relevant and timebound. These types of goals are known as Smart Goals.
Our goals should be evaluated and adjusted according to our priorities.
 Eliminating bad habits: - We cannot achieve our goals if we have bad habits.
We must eliminate our bad habits by finding a reason that's stronger than the habit
itself so that we can achieve our goals in life. Bad habits cannot be eliminated quickly
or painlessly. It will take some time to get eliminated. We can easily illuminate a
pathway that will eventually take us to our goals by eliminating our bad habits.
 Instilling self-discipline: - Self-discipline allows us to easily achieve our goals
within our set timeframe. If we don't have self-discipline, any small task can seem
daunting and very hard to complete. Waking up early, respecting elders, eating
healthy food, exercising and getting ample sleep are some good habits that will help
us to instil much-needed self-discipline in our lives.
 Mitigating distractions: - Distractions interrupt our progress in achieving our
goals in life. We should first become aware of the distractions that are all around us.
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Avoiding those distractions in our near future will help us to stay productive and
efficient in our workspace. Some of the common distractions that we face nowadays
are social media, smartphones, and Television. We should always avoid these types of
Distractions in our life so that we can reach our target (goals) without any delay.
 Leveraging daily goal setting: - We should take our long-term goal and break
them down into small milestones. These small milestones are easier to stick to and
focus on. They help us to stay focussed and keep us on track towards our long-term
goals that need a large time duration to complete. As we can easily lose sight of these
long-term goals when we are preoccupied with our daily moment-to-moment based
problems.
 Avoiding Procrastination: - Procrastination is one of many reasons that limit us
to achieve our goals in life. Procrastination is a silent killer which makes our goals
harder to achieve by stifling our progress towards them. It forces us to retreat into the
clutches of comfort and bad habits. We should not delay our actions no matter what
comes in our way.
 Managing time efficiently: - One should become an effective manager of time
so that he/she can achieve goals in life. Those who can manage their time resource
efficiently can easily achieve the hardest goals in life. We should institute an effective
system of efficiently managing our precious time rather than squandering it away.
 Welcoming failures in life: - The surest pathways to achieve our goals in life is
failure. Most of the World's famous and popular people have failed many times before
becoming successful in life. We shouldn't give up when we face difficult situations in
life. We should learn to welcome our failures when they come knocking on our door.
One must accept their failures and learn from them. We should leverage our failures
as learning experiences so that we can start from the beginning and face the hurdles
more smartly.
 Finding a mentor: - We should find a mentor (guru) in our life who will
illuminate a pathway towards success. Mentors are like Lighthouses who will show us
the right direction to sail in when we are searching how to achieve our goals in life.

 Tracking progress: - We should track our progress if we are serious about

achieving them. We can easily evaluate and adjust our progress when we are carefully
tracking them. We need to track our progress to ensure that we are in the correct
direction of achieving our goals.
 Welcoming Criticism: -We should always welcome criticism. We shouldn't
avoid them. We should listen to what critics have to say and correct it, to stay
competitive in achieving our goals in life. This will increase our chances of success in
life.
 Seeking out a daily dose of Inspiration: - We often feel discouraged when
we try to achieve big goals in life. Fear of failing and negative thinking suffocate and
restrict us from achieving our goals. To counteract these things, we should seek a
daily dose of inspiration in life. We should reach out to others who have achieved
success in life and can give valuable tips to achieve goals in life. They not only make
us confident but also motivate us to reach our target (goals) by sharing their
experiences.

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Conclusion

Goals help us to define ourselves. If we set our goals properly then we can predict
successfully where our life will lead us in the future. A well-defined life goal helps us to
understand where we should spend our energy, time and efforts in life. We should also
understand that by achieving our goals we can also leave a legacy behind us. By identifying
our short termed and long-term goals have made us focused in life. We should also give
importance to life reflection i.e. the experiences from certain incidences as they enable us to
learn from our faults and to apply what we have learned in our future endeavour life. Proper
strategies help us to achieve our goals easily. Making a time-chart of our daily routine in
MindGenius software will help us to reach our target within our set timeframe. So now we
should roll up our sleeves and work hard so that we can achieve our much-dreamed goals in
life.

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Cheong, R., 1999. Tourism Managemnet. Manao: s.n.

Gardanio, S., 2017. Will AR/VR Replace Travel & Tourism?. IOT For All, 27th July.

Hooijdonk, R. v., 2019. Technology is transforming travel and tourism. 24 th June.

Martin, C., 2017. Virtual Reality Not Seen As Substitute For Travel. AI & IOT Daily, 16 th June.

Minter, A., 2019. Your next vacation may be virtual. The Star Online.

Ranger, S., 2019. The strange future of AR and VR: Tentacles and time travel to digital doctors. ZD
NET, 2nd October.

Skirka, H., 2019. The reality of virtual travel: could it replace actual holidays?. Lifestyle.

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