Throughout this semester I’ve worked on 3 major assignments which were all new to me. I’ve never done a lab report, technical description and engineering proposal. I have never even heard of a technical description or engineering proposal up until now. When I read the syllabus I felt nervous when I saw the assignments I will have to complete. I somewhat knew what to expect for a lab report but not for the others. However as I progressed through the semester I saw that these assignments aren’t as bad as I thought. We were given sources which explained what each paper is and how to write one. These sources helped me create my first drafts and with the feedback I got it allowed me to improve my work.

Something I learned more about in this class is writing for your audience. Writing for your audience is very important because you don’t want to bore them with your topic. On top of that people are on different reading levels so you have to make sure whatever you are writing can be understood by a wide range of people.I learned that when writing complex papers such as a technical report it is crucial to know who you are writing for. When you are writing for engineers you have to be accurate and clear in your writing. When you are writing for someone who doesn’t read at an engineer’s level you would have to be simpler and clearer. Knowing this I tried my best to be clear not only on my technical report but on all my assignments. I wrote about the mechanisms of an office chair which I thought was going to be complex but after doing researching it wasn’t as complicated as I thought it would be.Based on the feedback I’ve received on my papers I believe I did great on keeping my papers clear.

Another thing I’ve learned, and I could still use more practice on would be collaborative writing. I’ve never worked collaboratively on paper before much less an engineering proposal. For this assignment we had to come up with an innovation for a problem. We needed to do research together and work together to create a strong proposal. From this assignment I learned how to work as a team by creating a group schedule and creating a contract to keep everyone on track. The contract worked really well for us as it set rules for us to follow in order to maximize work efficiency and communication. The chart helped us schedule times when we will be working on the project and submitting. As for why I say I need more practice is because I’m used to working alone. I don’t mind working with others but a small issue I had was with communication overall and contributing my share of ideas. I didn’t share all my ideas because my partners sounded like they knew what they were doing so I was following along. I followed the rules in our contract including responding to our partners within a certain time period but when it came to meetings through zoom, I didn’t talk as much as I would’ve liked. So, for my future group assignments I will try to improve my communication skills.

I believe I have a solid strategy for drafting, revising, editing and self-assessment. Reading however is something I always struggle with. I lose focus very quickly and often forget what I just read. I need to come up with strategy to help me digest what I read like taking notes and rereading. My strategy for drafting is to always look at an outline that is provided most of the time. I will always look at the outline to help me plan out the structure of my paper. Whenever an outline isn’t provided I would look into my previous assignments to help remind me of how the structure should be. My strategy for revising is to be opened for receiving feedback because I used to be slightly stubborn and wouldn’t make certain changes because I thought it was good. As for editing I always make sure everything is grammatically correct and rarely do I ever miss a few mistakes. For my self-assessment essays my strategy is to always be honest with myself because I want to improve on my writing skills and lying to myself won’t help at all. I have also practiced locating the proper sources for my writing projects as well as citing them. In order to make a strong paper you need to be able to find the proper sources which I have done for all my assignments.

Overall, I have learned a lot throughout this course and experienced writing new things, the lab report being my favorite. I found the lab report to be the most interesting because I could observe any experiment. I found two experiments that I thought were pretty cool, but I could only choose one, so I went for the one that was more complicated. I have also enhanced certain skills like writing for your target audience. I knew writing for your target audience is important, but it became even more significant when writing about a difficult topic. The way you write a paper will depend on your audience, so you’ll have to be clear and make it easy to understand. I have learned many skills but there are still ones I must work on. I need to work on communication on collaborative projects by sharing my ideas and just talking more in general. I also need to figure out a strategy to help me read and understand what I read. College level readings are very hard for me, so I need to start improving my reading skills as soon as possible. I went from feeling nervous at the beginning of this semester to feeling confident on my writing. With more practice and definitely a lot of reading I know I will be ready to tackle any future writing assignment I will get.