For a writing course, I have learned many new things other than improving my reading and writing skills which was very different than all of the courses I took in the past. I strongly believe that this is a good thing because the methods from this class taught me not only to be a better writer as an engineer, but showed me the up comings of my future. Throughout this semester, I have enjoyed writing each of the assignments because each of them involved in me writing about different topics that I am familiar with or needed to dig deeper upon. From this, it made me think more outside the box which pushed me out of my comfort zone when writing or searching for information. From the help of my classmates, they made me realize that working together brings the appreciation in communicating with others and that learning new ideas from different perspectives will always improve my knowledge. Because of this, I discovered that there is always an advantage of working in a group. I learned that good teamwork is the key to success when time and resources are limited. As everyone had their own point of view, many different ideas could be produced and I found the energy of group participation made me feel more energetic about contributing something that comes in mind. As a result, I was able to learn from all four assignments that even the simplest things on earth could be turned into something amazing if we put enough creativity and effort into working on them.

At the start of the class, the class and I were assigned to write a Memo to the president of City College of New York which focused on a problem in the school. For this assignment, I had to go through a lot of thought processing such as the difficulties of the cafeteria and how to fix them to improve it. For the first draft in class, I was not really prepared because I did not have a physical copy which gave me a difficult time to have all of the guidelines perfectly in my memo such as the format, content, and grammar. However, since I peer reviewed with three other people, it helped me come up with more ideas, gave me an idea of how the memo should look like, and how long it should be. I took advantage of this to edit my memo to make it reach all of the guidelines and made it easier for me in my editing process. Furthermore, deciding on a topic to write about was not difficult, but I was very indecisive because there were a lot of problems with the school such as lack of outlets, heating, transportation, cafeteria adjustments, and more. I chose cafeteria adjustments because since I’m always there with my friends, it was easier to choose different problems that aggravated a lot of students, including me and my friends. As a result, this assignment helped me improve my problem solving skills due to the amount of solutions I provided to fix this problem. If it wasn’t for the help of my classmates, I wouldn’t of been able to complete the full guidelines of my memo.

Furthermore, for the second assignment, we had to write a lab report. Back in high school, I wrote a lot of lab reports for my Biology, Chemistry, and Physics classes. All three classes had similar guidelines, follow the instructions in class to complete the lab and write about the procedure and calculations, in addition to the format being all MLA. So coming to class the next day, I was very prepared and relaxed to hear the instructions for the lab report we had to write about. We were told to read a certain chapter in our Technical Communications textbook about the format of a college level lab report. However, from reading the guidelines and formatting, I was very confused and unfamiliar due to the amount of new aspects into writing a lab report. For instance, we had to write an introduction, abstract, methods and materials, context, conclusion, and a reference page. Although becoming very dazed from all these new topics, we were told to write the lab report in APA format which is something I never heard or done. Although it was a total different format, it was little similar to MLA format such as alphabetical order for our citation page (Reference Page “APA” or Works Cited “MLA”), 1 inch margin, Times New Roman, 12 point font, and double spaced. From learning this, a lot of professors used both MLA and APA and this class provided me the advantage of writing a specific paper that involves either format.

For the technical description, I was very excited to do this assignment because it had to do with an object that is used very often. For me, I had countless items to choose from, playstation 4 controller, phone, lightbulb, video game system, headphones, or a gaming headset. Fromm all of these choices, I chose to write about a playstation 4 controller because on my free time, I play a lot of video games on the PS4. I wanted to know how the controller operates, what was inside, and to see why it attracted me to use it almost everyday and allday. Although being very enthusiastic in writing the technical description, I also had a little trouble in the process. I remember struggling with the organization of the writing. I did not know which information had priority in explaining my system because everything seemed to blend in. The images I used were correctly corresponded with my description of the controller. Unlike the lab report project, I believed that I did better this time because the topic was more interesting and easier. This project contained much more everyday terms rather than subject specific terms. Because of this, I did not struggle as much while writing this in comparison to the first paper. In addition, putting aside my knowledge of the controller from how it operates and its appearance, I had to find more information that I didn’t know such as the history and interior parts of the controller. From sony websites, to controller experts, and YouTube videos, I learned a lot of different aspects and little things on how the controller was designed and made.

For our final assignment, we were assigned to different groups that consisted of those that had the same major. In my position, I was assigned to a group of other civil engineers in the class. We had to identify a problem or a need for a specific engineering innovation, the design, and production for which we will present to the class. We had so many ideas involving civil engineering such as erosion, electricity and energy proficiency, or anything that has to do with infrastructure failure. However, we decided to do something that wasn’t mentioned online or too easy to write about because we wanted to challenge ourselves. We chose to do bike lanes because they can provide safety benefits to road users though separate operational space for safe motorist overtaking of bicyclists, particularly in narrow, congested areas. Also, bike lanes provides people safer routes around the city without risk of getting hit by a car, injury, and car accidents. Nevertheless, we each took different sections of the project based on our preferences and strengths. I was responsible for the background and history of bike lanes and the our main purpose of installing more to help our environment. It took a lot of dedication and time to complete the proposal. In the end, we were able to finish the proposal on time. For the powerpoint, each us of contributed to our own parts. On the day of presentation, we delivered our proposal successfully by arriving early and practicing before hand. Because of our dedication of wanting to finish the project and getting a good grade, it pushed each of us individually by improving our knowledge and communication.

Overall, this course has taught me so many things that I still need to perfect in the future such as writing and communication skills, problem solving, and different aspects of organization. Throughout this year, I have already picked up a lot of new writing techniques. I learned about writing literally versus figuratively. I used to write in a very literal way where everything was straight forward, but now I take my writing to a new personal level. Also, my professor taught me that when writing for an assignment, I should not always focus on the word count because there is always plenty of information to write about. It’s about getting to the point by backing it up with my own knowledge and outside resources. I also learned how to write in a professional standpoint, specifically an engineer, and not just an english writing standpoint. Assignments such as the lab report and the technical description showed me that there is more to writing in an engineer’s perspective and position.