Joe Jorge
Professor Delamare
Writing for Engineers
May 19, 2020
Reflection
To begin this semester, I went into this class believing that my writing ability would improve, but humbled by the fact that I knew I had flaws in my writing. I looked at writing as something that I only did at school and consisted solely of boring essays and long drawn out assignments. Before this semester, I didn’t even attempt to dig deeper into my writing and for the most part, I tried to do the bare minimum to just get by. I would often analyze and seek help from my peers, and sometimes even from my teachers, which kept myself and my writing back from reaching its fullest potential. Overall, my writing before this semester can be summarized as lackluster, but before this semester began, I made sure to set a goal to get better in all aspects.
I can now see how significant certain aspects of writing are. Specifically, how important the course learning outcome: enhance strategies for reading, drafting, revising, editing, and self-assessment is to my writing. Brainstorming, writing drafts, etc, are all ways to plan and perfect a person’s ideas and this can be seen in essentially every assignment I have worked on throughout this semester. I did not take drafts seriously before this, as I thought they were unnecessary, but taking the time to write a well thought out draft will make the final product much more appealing and exceptional. I also understand now how effective it can be to reference other people’s work and use that as a way of improving on your writing, which I did most effectively during the technical description assignment, as it was something I had never written before.
Prior to this semester, I had done research for assignments using the CCNY library database, but I believe I was most effective in doing so this semester. The course learning outcomes which include: practicing using various library resources, online databases, and the Internet to locate sources appropriate to your writing projects and strengthen your source using practices (including evaluating, integrating, quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, analyzing, and citing sources) are effective and significant in my opinion. The classes that we had during the semester in the library classrooms, that explained how to use specific terms and filters to locate exactly what source you are looking for helped me become much more efficient when it came to finding sources. This was the most apparent for me during the rhetorical analysis assignment. For me, virtual reality is something that I am very much interested in, so being able to understand how to base my search around the key term virtual reality, made finding my research paper simpler. Once I had my research paper, strengthening what I was saying using quotes or paraphrasing was the next hill I had to get over, since I was not very good at it before this semester. Finding the perfect source was the first and most important part of being able to use effective quotes and make my writing much more appealing to the reader. In my rhetorical analysis assignment, I believe that I was able to use my research paper to create a compelling analysis through the use of quotes, paraphrasing, figures and other components.
My favorite piece or project from this semester definitely has to be the memo assignment given to the class at the beginning of the semester. This assignment allowed students to acknowledge problems they noticed whether it be in their community, or around the campus. We were required to form our problem and solutions in a sophisticated memo letter that summarized the problem and discussed how to go about resolving said problem. The memo gave students free reign to be as creative they wanted to, as it pertained to being a thoughtful and aware community member. As a result, the course learning outcome: formulate and articulate a stance through and in your writing was something that I was able to convey during this assignment. Choosing something that I thought was important and needed attention, made me feel like I was writing something impactful that was going to improve my community.
My least favorite assignment from this semester was unfortunately the collaborative assignment. While it was a great idea, I believe with everything that occurred throughout the semester, it made the course learning outcome: develop and engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes, a much more difficult process for me as a student. Not being able to collaborate in-person with those in my group made everyone much more indifferent to the project we were working on. That being said however, while we were in class face to face, talking to my classmates and brainstorming ideas with them was much easier and efficient. Peer reviews during class were great ways of interacting with classmates and receiving feedback and constructive criticism from my peers definitely improved my work as the semester went on.
When it comes to my performance as a writer this semester, I believe I have shown much improvement compared to myself from last semester. Although I still did not do things like visit the writing center for help, or set up conferences with my professor, I made sure to email her if I had any questions about the assignment we were working on at the time. I understand the importance of seeking help from not just my professor, but from my peers as well, so asking them questions during class about the way they went about writing, or ideas they had, as a means to hopefully spark some ideas of my own was important to me. I do still need improvement, specifically in making sure that paragraphs flow smoothly, and when it comes to formatting my papers and citing sources. I want my work to show that I am continuing to grow as a writer and as a person, that although I am becoming more mature and learning, there is much more I can improve on. In my opinion, my work does just that and while it is far from flawless, it is steadily improving from assignment to assignment, and as long as I will be writing.
