This site is designed to showcase my writing!
Throughout this semester I have accumulated a great deal of skills which have helped me improve my writing and completely changed my mindset on how I approach any writing assignment.
This course was entirely different from my previous writing course in the fall semester. In English 110, most of the assignments were creative writing and required simply your thoughts and a keyboard. Prior to this course my only form of drafting or even planning of my writing was minimal and ceased to exist. When wanting to complete a writing assignment I would simply create a new google doc and start the assignment right away. This made things a bit difficult for certain assignments, especially those using scholarly sources and articles. However, from the sheer amount of work I have done this semester, which required a massive amount of outsourced information, my planning skills for writing assignments have immensely improved.
One of the first writing assignments that were required in this course was the lab report analysis. This assignment was very daunting at first. I was extremely familiar with writing lab reports and collecting data and explaining what it means, but this assignment required me to be on the other side of the spectrum, where I analyzed the writing in the lab report, opposed to the results and conclusions. This assignment allowed me to practice using various library resources, online databases, and the Internet to locate sources and engage in genre analysis and think about audience expectations regarding conventions of genre, medium, and rhetorical situations. When writing this assignment I had to research various different topics to find a lab report that piqued my interest. I used multiple sources to find the lab report and was successful using the CCNY library database. .
When writing the lab report analysis I was able to really dig deep into what the author was trying to convey. I learned that although lab reports and scientific studies are based on fact and reason, they do want to convince you that what they are researching and proposing is legitimate and should be looked into further. These documents have a purpose and they have rhetoric within them displaying it. In the report I explained that, “researchers must keep their audience in mind and use terms and language that is familiar to their audience”, this conveys that even though lab reports are based on fact and experimentation, they also try to convey something to the reader in a less objective sense. On the contrary, during my time writing the technical description I was able to see how much manual writing was similar and different to lab reports. Manual writing similar to laboratory writing can sometimes require explaining a term or a certain process that happens in order for the reader to understand the content as a whole. I noticed that the rhetoric used in manual writing has the purpose of explaining every detail and part to the reader in an extremely objective way. Sentences explaining the direct location of the parts were extremely common, aiding in the visual understanding of the item being described.
In this course I learned to take a stance in my writing as well as synthesize, analyze and cite sources. In the third writing assignment I completed, which was the Engineering Proposal, I took a stance on the issue of fast fashion. In the introduction I explained that “ Fast fashion is a never ending problem in a world where overconsumption is rampant. The presence of social media and the latest trends circulating worldwide contribute to an economy where we view clothes as a disposable commodity rather than something that will last for the rest of our lives”. I then used this stance to center my group’s invention around this issue. I made it clear that the invention that is going to be described in the text will be a solution to this problem that has been going on for quite some time.
Additionally, In the engineering proposal I was required to analyze a multitude of sources, and draw parts of them all while intertwining them into this new idea, which was the invention my group was creating. It took a great amount of effort to research and find details about 3D printers in general and how they have exactly been tweaked to make clothing, the testing for 3D printers, as well as the accessibility to the public for such a device. I specifically demonstrated this when I was explaining the cost and time for the production of the invention by explaining that “ On average the earlier models of the 3D printers took at least four five years to test, calibrate and assemble ( Laplume, Anzalone, & Pearce, 2015). Additionally, costs for 3D printers used to be upwards of $10,000 to $20,000 ( Laplume, Anzalone, & Pearce, 2015). However, today 3D printing is commonly used and much more mainstream, which decreased the cost significantly to around $1,500 to $3,000.” Here, I was able to take already existing studies and connect it with this idea my group and I had made. I was able to make a stance and support it with evidence from studies and weave it into the creation of my group’s invention.
During this group project I was able to acknowledge others’ range of linguistic differences as resources, and draw on those resources to create a successful group dynamic and paper. During the group project my colleagues and I were from very different backgrounds, with different talents, strengths, and weaknesses. Throughout the group project I really felt as if I was taking the lead and steering the ship. I was not working in a group of friends or girls, so it was difficult to communicate at first solely due to the fact I was pushed out of my comfort zone. As time progressed, I was able to see that both of my group members were very creative and more familiar with the elements of 3D printing technology than I was. They were able to guide me through how the machine worked and what parts are used in most 3D printers.
Lastly, although this may be the last writing class I take during my undergraduate career, I have learned a great deal about writing, planning, and technique which I intend to carry on for the rest of my life well into my career.
