This blog post consists of a reflection about the Unit 2 assignments. It is broken down into three parts explaining lessons from: researching how to create a LinkedIn profile, preparing a research proposal and outline, and the peer-review process.
Researching how to create a LinkedIn profile was an eye-opening experience. There was extensive material explaining the complexities and nuances behind creating a professional social media network. Unlike a personal social media page, a professional page has a lot more thought and purpose put into it that I was not aware of prior to this assignment. There should be a purpose and logical reason for every part of a profile that will help pursuing career goals, connections, and professional opportunities. This experience taught me that although I already have a LinkedIn profile, there is a lot of room for improvement to my profile to make it an effective tool in a professional setting.
For brainstorming for the proposal, it was difficult to decide on what topic to specifically pick as the assignment was very open ended. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic hindering any social connection for the past year, I struggled to identify a system or procedure that was problematic in a workplace, as a volunteer or as a student. However, as a passionate environmental student I eventually found a topic that piqued interest. The only question about this process is simply how it will all come together. Trying to manage life, work, and this course I am slightly concerned on when I will have time to work on it. It would be helpful to see an example of past student to assist in the understanding of the expectations in terms of organization and overall structure of a report.
For the peer review, I reviewed Charles Wang’s research proposal. This process is extremely helpful because every time a revision or correction is needed it forces me to look at my own work and find these same errors. For example, in Charles’ work it was mentioned that there were ‘potential health problems’ with little expansion on what this meant. No fault to Charles here as it is very easy to get caught up in your own writing and forget the reader may not know what you are referring to. However, noticing this in Charles work forced self-reflection and self-editing to take place to try and ensure this confusion does not occur within my own work. The peer-editing process also was a lesson in reviewing my work for repetition and conciseness. Although there has been progress in removing pro-nouns, there is still room for noticing things such as starting multiple sentences with the same word or term.
Attached below is the revised research proposal and Charles’ peer review of my original research proposal:
Revised Research Proposal: https://blogs.ubc.ca/abramski301/2021/06/29/__trashed/
Charles’ Peer Review: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl301-98a-2021sa/2021/06/18/peer-review-of-claire-abramskis-formal-report-proposal/