Radhyyah Hossain
12/13/19
Are Rollercoasters Fun?: A Reflection About My Writing Class
Rollercoasters have their ups and downs but in the end, many want to ride it again or never want to go back. Similarly, this class had its ups and downs and at the end of the day, I’m glad to have gotten through the class. Writing was never my strongest skill but this class, Writing for Engineers, helped me improve by teaching basic writing mistakes and how to fix it. Throughout the semester, we were given many projects: a resume, interview report, lab report, a group proposal project, and a technical description. There were also other small assignments such as making and practicing an elevator pitch, project reflections, and more.
Creating a resume was our first assignment because our goal, as college students, is to get a job and jobs require resumes. This project was not my best since parts of my resume were wrong and not what the professor asked for. I wrote a cover letter for a job I found on LinkedIn and forgot to write my name at the top of my resume. I also wrote the job posting incorrectly because I thought it was only keywords and not the actual job description. Nonetheless, this resume reflected poorly on my writing skills. However, I did learn that many jobs have keywords they look for and to put those keywords into your resume. That is something I will remember and use from now on for jobs, internships, e.t.c
The interview report was the second major assignment we had in the course. It required research on what professional engineers in our preferred fields write about. The person I interviewed was a friend of my brother’s who pursued a job in civil engineering. Civil engineering is a field that I am interested in so being able to interview an actual civil engineer gave me insight into what engineers really do. I didn’t realize that engineers write at their jobs; I just assumed that they only completed projects. I learned that engineers write a good amount for project reports, presentations, and emails. Not only do they write but they write as a group. The project reports are more of a collaboration than something you do by yourself. I used the interview and also my knowledge from a previous engineering internship as a synthesis to write my interview report.
The lab report was the next assignment and it was to write on an experiment about dice probability. We had to do an experiment with two dice and record how many times a number showed up. I used technology to create my data and calculations. More specifically, I used Microsoft Excel. The analysis was usually something I would struggle with on lab reports since I didn’t know what I had to write in that section. I learned that it was not a summary of the report but an understanding of it and its outcomes. It’s about taking the experiment a step further. In this case, I talked about how the outside environment can affect what number the dice rolls to. This report was also the first time I had to include an appendix and use APA style citation. From this report, I learned how to cite using the APA style and use Microsoft Excel for calculations; which, I never used before. APA style citations are preferred by my other classes so learning how to do it came in handy.
The group proposal project was our first group assignment. This was my favorite assignment because we got to plan, and create our own project that helps the school. The 3 other people in my group were Ushna Arshid, Maryhelen De Simone, Jinjie Liao. They made this project fun because we all completed separate parts but helped each other. Our project was on creating another library that solves the problems we face with the current libraries on campus. We had to research every aspect of the project including construction, workers, funding, location, e.t.c. The main place where we researched was at the campus libraries. It encouraged informational literacy because we used The City College of New York’s online library and created a survey for people who use the library. We had to read about construction, both online and a physical book to get a better understanding of our project. At the end of the project, we also had to present our idea to the class. From this project, I learned about A&P and how to use it in real life. A&P stands for audience and purpose. For this project, the audience was my classmates and The City College of New York in general. The purpose of the project was to make the campus better for students. I also learned how to create and complete a project effectively. Projects don’t just require research but also things like getting measurements of an area and creating surveys.
The technical description was the last major assignment for this course. This assignment was also one of my favorites since we got to research about anything we wanted. I chose to research about prosthetics. Prosthetics were something that I was really interested in because it’s essentially trying to replicate a body part. This project was something that I had several drafts of because all the information had to be presented in two pages with pictures. I had many drafts of this because I wanted to make sure that I included only the important parts of my research. It was fun learning about something that is still ongoing because it shows its improvement. From this assignment, I learned how to condense my work to only the necessary parts while also hitting the key points. That was something I struggled with before because while condensing, I would brush over key ideas that should be included.
Apart from the main assignments throughout the semester, we also had other small assignments. The elevator pitch was something we worked on at the beginning of the semester for our resumes. Resumes are basically elevator pitches that highlight your skills and experiences. In order to write a proper resume, we started by highlighting ourselves, in class, for practice. We talked about our skills, hobbies, and interests but also keeping them short and to the point. We also wrote reflections on our assignments before and after we completed them. The reflections are our thoughts and experiences on the assignments. Another assignment that we had was the quest. The quest was our final which tested us on everything we learned about writing in the semester. It wasn’t hard because when we learned a writing skill, we had an assignment that tested and helped practice that skill so when it was time for the quest, we knew what to do.
As this semester concludes, I didn’t realize how much I would learn about writing. I didn’t recognize many of the problems I had with my writing and not only did this class help me notice them, but it helped me fix them while also learning new things. As this rollercoaster of a class ended, it ended on a high note.
