Heyyyyyyy. My name is Nick and I want to share some knowledge with you about English 21007.

This course was both difficult and pleasant at the same time. This class wasn’t the traditional English classroom setting. Writing for Engineers hones in on the critical reading and thinking, research, and writing a student will one day need to succeed in all writing courses and specifically engineering courses.

This course also exposes students to written material engineers use in the professional environment. We were taught how to examine, analyze, and create various types of technical communication such as: memos, lab report analysis’, technical descriptions, proposals, and presentations.

I learned how to communicate my knowledge, plans, and ideas in a professional manner. In addition, learned to synthesize information, find answers, and present ideas to some of the different audiences I encountered.

In this course, we focused on reading and listening, essential steps in the writing process, effective writing, synthesizing material from various sources, and the ability to locate and evaluate relevant library and online research. The grading policy for this class, I will say is strict and unmotivating. I felt like after every revision, any and every little thing was scrutinized.

There is a MAJOR concept that I need to stress. Our class took place during the COVID-19 global pandemic. During this time, our class became hybrid, forcing both students and professors to navigate their work online. There was A LOT of uncertainty and miscommunication from both professors and students. During this unsettling time, I had to take the initiative and continue completing my assignments on time, meeting deadlines and guidelines while others chose to procrastinate and waste time.  

However, the case may be, I know what I did and that is what matters. I believe although the class shifted from in-person classes to hybrid, I was still able to accomplish the Course Learning Outcomes from completing the Essays/Projects.

The first “real” assignment we did in class was the Memorandum. This assignment was intricate in terms of making sure it was properly formatted and structured. It was difficult to not be biased in my chosen issue, but I understand now that memo’s will feel like that. For a full reflection on this assignment, please visit the Memo Tab under Essays/Projects, to view my Self-Reflection.

The second assignment was the Lab Report Analysis. This project has enabled me to increase my ability to practice evaluating, paraphrasing, analyzing, and citing sources. Furthermore, this Lab Report Analysis permitted me to negotiate my own writing goals and audience expectations. In my opinion, the Lab Report Analysis was probably one of the simpler assignments I did in this course. Although it may seem like a lot, I think the hardest thing was to figure out the format and how you were going to compare the lab reports to each other. Once that is set, everything else is simple. You just have to read the lab reports and compare how each of them chose to write it. I think a lot of students may say this would be a hard assignment because it was difficult to find a topic they were interested in. If you find reports on something you like, the assignment won’t feel as dreadful.

The third assignment was the Technical Description. In my opinion, this was the hardest assignment done in Writing for Engineers. I was able to accomplish course learning outcomes of acknowledging my own and others’ range of linguistic differences as resources and draw on those same resources to develop rhetorical sensibility. It was essential to be both persuasive and informative to my audience without pure salesmanship. I had to describe, advertise and give a complete analysis of the product. Students needed to have a proper stance of writing their technological description and make their product sound like it was the best of the brand/model without making it sound too selling. I found making sure to express and explain each part and sub-part of the innovation the hardest because some things can be and are overlooked. This required me to present my information very clearly so people who aren’t well versed in my description’s vocabulary, can follow along easily.

The last and final assignment for this class was the Proposal. This was originally supposed to be a group project but of course with COVID-19 it was not ideal therefore Professor Rodwell changed it to a one-person assignment. The options are explained in the proposal tab if you’re interested in knowing the specifics. The proposal was very simple. There was already a sample format for students to follow and a lot of the information used was contributed from our already finished Technical Description. Another part of this project was to complete a presentation version of our proposal. Again, this was very simple. Information was used from the proposal and it was basically the same format and flow with changes in between.

This class was DEFINITELY challenging for MANY reasons. COVID-19, miscommunication, strict grading, poor peer-reviews but regardless the more challenging a course is, the more you’ll learn from it. This class taught me how to make improvements in my work ethics and personal growth.