Hello my name is Truthful ward and this is a self reflection of my combined works completed in Writing for engineering 20017.

Throughout my education from grade school to high school and then college I always had a natural skill and infinity for writing. I enjoyed formulating my own take on articles and stories whenever presented to me in class in the form of writing assignments and always received good grades for my works. From my vocabulary to the way I conceptualize certain topics and ideas coupled with my ability to formulate my own opinion on abstract concepts I thought I had reached the peak of my writing capabilities. Writing seemed so simple to me and being reinforced by the praise I received for my minimal efforts in the form of good grades created a plateau on my mind limiting my growth. After a while my spark for writing began to fade and I reached a stagnant point and believed there was nothing left to learn. The process for all my writings were the same: take whatever the source was and break it down then offer my opinion in the form of creating lengthy paragraphs that included information that backed my side on the internet. During my time in this course though that feeling had changed, there are always more things to learn in any subject that was made evident to me. From the beginning my Professor through the use of her course curriculum highlighted having to follow the use of a format which for me i believed was a big change. I’m very used to writing freely about things which is great for more abstract writings but not as great for more formal professional writings. Things like formatting, the use of in text and out text citation of peer reviewed sources and references I had always overlooked because I thought as long as my writing itself was good that the other parts wouldn’t matter as much, I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Formatting can really make a difference in your work especially in the eyes of proffessionals. An example of this is in my technical description which is probably my favorite of my works because it’s the closest to an actual engineering based paper being that it describes the schematics in detail like how an individual would when showcasing their product in a real life meeting. In this technical description I found that even though I had the proper information, good images and selling points my work lacked the logical organization and professionalism required for most presentations in the work space. My professor pointed these things out to me and when I took a deeper look I could see what she meant. Most writing’s main goal is to hook the reader and persuade them, making them believe what they are pushing for is worthwhile. A main way to do this is by passing the eye test, people are visual creatures who react positively to things that visually make sense and have order. If a person can’t make it past the structure of your literary work then whatever you had to say will be lost regardless if it’s good or not. The use of APA formatting which was the focal formatting structure of the course showed me the little things really make a difference when writing, from the way you structure your title page to the way you display your references. It all matters if you want to make a paper that is fit for the workplace. Being pushed to really take my time and format correctly was a new and uncomfortable thing but it was something that had to be learned no matter how tedious I believed it previously to be. Something else I believe was beneficial during this time in the course is having so much interaction with the other students. Things like the peer review also helped because sometimes getting that extra opinion or two can help you correct things, helping you notice small things you can change or disregard about your work, said things that also may not have been picked up even by the Professor. Also being able to collaborate on a group project that combined all of the different aspects of writing for engineering was a great part of this course because it showed us how to truly work with each other. Writing usually is all about you, how you think, how you word things and how you conceive a certain topic. Navigating a writing assignment alongside others was another necessary yet new concept. We had to make compromises when writing so everyone could feel heard and a part of what was being done, we had to organize our work by giving each member of our group certain tasks dividing the work evenly and had to make sure each person’s work aligned and flowed into the next’s properly. Which is a great piece of experience to take away because in the future that is something we would also have to do in the workplace as being the field of engineering it is a common practice collaborating on group work requiring collective efforts and organization.

This brings me now to probably one of my least favorites of my works while being in this class which is my introduction. I say it’s my least favorite because it’s the closest out of all of my works in this class to how I originally wrote my writing assignments. It took minimal effort for me to talk about myself with an introduction so I didn’t feel like it pushed me in any way really. There was no citing because it doesn’t use any outside sources and it didn’t require any formatting because there was no need for a chronological flow of paragraphs and pages, it didn’t require any collaboration because it was simply a background on me. It was a one page assignment to put our feet in the water really so I can say I didn’t really get too much from it. Overall though I enjoyed this class and feel like I gained a new level of experience when writing. An experience that I can take with me in my future courses in addition to the workplace. I hope to showcase my development with this site and all of my works i created during my time in this course.