Hello everyone!
I am excited to announce that I have officially completed my technical writing course! What a journey this has been, and for that I am grateful. As you all know from previous blogs that this was my first ever semester of University and wasn’t exactly sure what to expect. It has been noted that English is definitely not one of my favourite subjects, but I must say I really enjoyed this Technical Writings course taught by Dr. Paterson. It’s funny to me, as now in my mid 20’s I just figured out that not all English courses are horrible- woohoo! I wasn’t a fan of high school English, because I feel like you got marked on your creativity with story writing, and I do not have much creativity in me when writing- so I never felt like it was for me. With taking Technical Writing, it helped to change my mindset that not all English courses are brutal – and some can actually be very enhancing to your professional career.
Looking back on this whole semester, I have seen quite a change in my writing (both in the course AND in my professional world!) I believe that my strengths coming into this course were being able to peer edit and provide constructive criticism as well time management. My biggest weakness coming into this course was the fact that I had no previous university experience prior to this, so I was very nervous and doubtful of my skills and wondered how I would compare to all my classmates. Now that I have completed all units, I can confirm that I wasn’t as great at peer reviewing as I thought I was, and I didn’t stick out like a sore thumb when in contrast with all my peers!
I trust that throughout this term my learning process was strengthened by the amount of time and effort I dedicated to completing all assignments. When knowing an assignment was due, I would make sure that I read and understood all the readings (not going to lie, some classes in the past at college I would just skim through the readings) and actually be aware of the learning objectives. With being this dedicated to a course, it helped to strengthen not only my learning process, but my self-confidence and techniques of learning! I believe that a weakness of mine throughout the course was worrying that I didn’t complete certain assignments to the best of my ability – sometimes I felt like I was lacking that ‘special touch’. This could play on my low self-confidence as a first term university student. By about unit three I felt much more confident in my writings, as well as communicating and providing feedback to my peers!
With having the ENGL 301 Technical Writing course under my belt, I believe this will greatly enhance my professionalism in the world of my dental career. I now have confidence in memos, application letters and resumes, social networking, formal reports, peer reviews and web folios! This course has helped me to strengthen many skills including time-management, technicalities of writing different documents, peer reviewing and online communication- which is all very beneficial to me as I begin to make advancements in my career. I believe that with completing this course it has given me the abilities to communicate and collaborate on more of a professional level. I am excited to be able to use my new-found strengths and skills in technical writing as I move forward in my career as a dental hygienist!
I would like to thank my Pencil Pack team, as well as Dr. Paterson for getting me out of my comfort zone in an English course and pushing me to do my best!
Thanks for reading and all the best,
Meagan Rosenberg