Strengths & Weaknesses

Learning Process

Admittedly, when I signed up for this class and learned that the entire course would be “just writing” in a blog format, I was dubious about the teaching strategy. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I know I learn by doing and practicing, and this was the perfect format for the course. My strengths lie in my tenacity and resilience in ensuring my writing pieces are as perfect as possible. Because grammar remains my biggest weakness, I have learned to utilize Grammarly to check my assignments. I do not have a paid version, so only a little gets corrected, and the rest I edit myself. I have sometimes spent upwards of four hours compiling and editing my peer reviews and blog posts, so I can eliminate as many errors as possible. By editing them in Grammarly, I’ve learned a little about punctuation from trial and error and better synonyms that sound more professional than what I usualy use. ENGL 301 taught me a lot about professionalism, formatting, etiquette, and courtesy in writing. This course did not teach grammar; it is something I know I will have to continue to learn. 

Assignments

I did surprisingly well on most of my assignments, as reflected by the high grades I am currently getting. My strengths lay in writing memorandums and blog posts. The peer reviews and the formal proposal were my biggest challenges, but simultaneously the more satisfying assignments to complete. Rereading my peer reviews, I can see how well I progressed over the three. I no longer fear offending my peers because I have learned how to properly format the feedback in a courteous and friendly tone. I am most proud of the effort I put into these reviews to help my peers. The formal proposal report was a challenge to keep in the correct tense. I struggled to write between past and present tense. It sounded as if the survey results needed to be written about in the past tense – however, the results represented the present and were, therefore, written in the present tense. It took me several days of editing and re-editing to write it perfectly. Ultimately, I was proud of what I delivered.

Skills & Strengths in My Career

As I am already in a professional career, I can only speak to how this course will help me going forward. Developing my writing skills with a YOU attitude will be invaluable in my career. Using this strategy in emails and proposals will be far more beneficial in obtaining the desired results than my current approach. Previously I would have focused on the pain points of my problem, but now I know to focus on the benefits the problem solver will gain. Having learned the importance of editing, I now ensure my writing is well thought out, clear, concise, and as free from errors as possible; this includes my legal charting, emails, and educational material I compose. If I apply for my master’s degree, ENGL 301 has provided me with the foundation to write the proper correspondence for admission and a strong application letter. Most of all, I have developed the skills to write an excellent cover letter and resume. I have compared my writing to previous iterations of an old cover letter I had and can see that I have progressed. I am excited to apply my writing skills to all areas of nursing. 

In unit 4, the assignments were to put compile an application package, finish the formal report proposal, and construct a web folio.

Putting together a web folio has been challenging. Admittedly, other than LinkedIn, I did not know that web folios existed. To the best of my knowledge, they’re not common in the healthcare sector. The web folio required doing research to find examples of what one looked like. I knew I wanted to tailor it to a potential employer in healthcare. I am not tech-savvy and the biggest challenge has been formatting WordPress to do what I wanted it to accomplish. Figuring this out included many hours of Googling and watching Youtube for the simplest things. I find WordPress hard to navigate, and this felt rather frustrating at times. I did eventually reach out for help with things like embedding my resume into a post.

Providing the content for the web folio was easier. Most of the content showcased my previous ENGL 301 assignments. The only new part of the folio was the application package, reflections, and a biography. I thoroughly enjoyed putting together the application package as it is a job application that I might use in the future. Revisiting my resume also made me realize that I had the word “professional” misspelled as “proffesional” in one of my headings! It has been on my resume since 2020, and no one, including myself, has caught the mistake until now. I had a laugh because I have used that resume in many job applications already. Having taken ENGL 301, I now know the importance of proofreading, editing, and using software for grammar to ensure my writing is impeccable.
Building this web folio has been mostly enjoyable, minus a few frustrating moments, but I hope you enjoy the final result.

Over the course of ENGL 301, there were assignments where I wrote a reflection in the format of a blog post to think about how the unit progressed for me. I have posted 1-3 below. I found them helpful in summarizing everything I had gone through with each assignment. Rereading these took me back to the beginning of the semester, where I can see that I struggled with the assignments such as peer reviews, but I now feel confident in writing. It was a productive assignment that provided me with insight into my progression.

Reflection 3

In unit three, we designed surveys and compiled data for our Formal Proposal. We submitted a draft to our team for peer review.

Formal Proposal 

I found the Formal Proposal assignment fun. I chose to research how commuting and employment affected study time and course selection for UBC students and made recommendations on how to improve distance education at UBC. The topic I chose was close and personal to me. Living in Squamish means I must take at least 7-8 hours of my day to get to 2 classes. If there were increased availability online, I could take more classes. I concluded there must be a whole cohort of adults who felt and thought the same. Designing the surveys on Qualtrics was a bit of a challenge. It has been a long time since I have used the program, and I required a few refreshers to figure out the formatting. Distributing the surveys went differently than I anticipated. Initially, I was going to post the survey on Reddit. However, Reddit only accepts post-graduate research that has been approved by an ethics board. My PSYC instructor agreed to let me post the survey on the class Piazza discussion board, and I found another relevant Facebook group to post in too. I was worried that this would be more of an in-person collection of data scenario, which at the time felt tedious and daunting. But the online survey made it enjoyable. The compilation of the data into charts and graphs was my favorite. I enjoyed watching the data come to life and tell a story. Interviewing the instructors was also fun and yielded totally opposing views. Compiling the professor’s responses with the data and supporting literature resulted in a robust analysis section.

Writing the proposal draft seemed hard at first, but once I got on a roll, I worried my assignment would be too long. Conciseness is not my strong suit, so this is challenging me to practice it. The writing plan that I made up in a previous assignment was invaluable. Sticking to it helped me to stay ahead with writing, and as a result, I finished more than I needed to. I even had to make a separate draft as I had already written up the letter of transmittal and references. When I started this proposal, I kept thinking about how to improve the students’ problems. I realized that I had to emphasize what UBC would gain from my recommendations and that helping the students is a secondary benefit. It was good practice and had me reflect on my real-life work emails where I can get caught in this trap. I look forward to writing them better to see if I can achieve better outcomes.

Peer Review

The peer review was also fun to do. Though the reviews always take me a lot longer than I anticipated. I provided so many suggestions I was worried that I might seem harsh. This time I edited thoroughly to remove any “persons” and avoided all imperative verbs. The peer review included revisions suggesting numerous paragraph and heading changes, and I found it difficult to write it clearly. It is much easier to illustrate these changes while editing over Google Docs, or in person. I hope this peer review reflects what I have learned from writing the previous two. I also hope that I was able to provide some valuable feedback.

Upon receiving my peer review, I found that most of my revisions focused on formatting, which I expected as it was a first draft. My reviewer suggested I resize my visuals to make them larger and to clarify a few points in the definitions. She also pointed out that sentences do not usually start with numbers. I was unsure if this differed for a data section, and after some research, concluded that she was correct. I revised all the sentences to the proper formatting. Overall, I felt that there were not too many things to alter and it bolstered my confidence that I was on the right track.

Closing Thoughts

Overall, I have been keeping up with all the assignments well and my writing is improving. I still must re-look up APA citation/reference formatting every time I use it. I do not often use it in my everyday life. Grammar continues to be a struggle for me, but I have also learned a few mistakes I tend to repeat and can now self-correct them. I look forward to compiling the web folio to showcase the semester’s assignments.

I have attached my formal proposal drafts as a PDF and as a Word doc below.

Formal Proposal Draft PDF

Formal Proposal Draft

In Unit 2, we wrote a best practice memo for LinkedIn networking practices, the start, an outline, and a peer review of the formal proposal.

LinkedIn

I found creating a list of top practices for creating a LinkedIn profile relatively easy. There was a superfluity of blogs and information on the internet advising how to optimize LinkedIn profiles, and many echoed each other. I feel less daunted at updating my LinkedIn profile after conducting the research. I also learned that LinkedIn has abundant resources for networking, professional development, and educational content. I now believe it to be a valuable tool for networking, while before I felt a little blasé toward it.

Formal Report

On the topic of my formal report, brainstorming and preparing were overwhelming and a bit scary. I was unsure if I could propose a problem to solve that would be long enough for the assignment. Interviewing people also created some anxiety as I’m not exceedingly outgoing or physically on campus regularly. However, once I found an issue I related to and was passionate about, designing an outline became easy. The data to support my proposal will be assembled from an online Qualtrics survey. Using an online survey decreases my anxiety. I also hope to interview a couple of professors once my questions get approved. I feel confident that I will be able to keep up with the progress of my proposal. The writing schedule component of the memorandum assigned this week was a great idea and will help me keep on track.

Peer Review Process & Writing

Regarding this week’s peer review, I found it much more challenging than the first peer review. I reviewed Jade Duan’s proposal. In all honesty, I am not entirely sure why I struggled. I didn’t grapple with the content of my peer’s proposal but more with the how-to structure of the feedback. I forgot to leave out the “person” tense and had to go back and make some corrections. To strengthen my argument, Jade suggested I add citations. My professor also evaluated my writing and provided some examples of how I could enhance my peer review. In the process, I learned to avoid imperative verbs by writing my correcting the peer review and the memo assignment.

I can see that my writing is improving through these exercises, and I am confident I will do much better on my third peer review. I often enjoy reading my team’s proposals, peer reviews, and the other teams’ writing. I appreciate that we all have very different writing styles. Sometimes I find myself drawing on their writing style or revising my content as I see a better example of conciseness. A couple of my team members have formal proposals that I can directly relate to. I am excited to read all their formal reports as their topics are diverse and unique. Overall, I am enjoying this course and look forward to these coming weeks.

Link to my Formal Proposal

Link to Jade’s Peer Review of my Proposal

The Writing Process

In unit 1 of ENGL 301, we were tasked to write a technical definition of a complex term targeted toward a non-technical audience. We then got it peer-reviewed, reviewed a partner’s definition, and provided feedback.

I chose the term, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) from the medical field. Having honed the skills of articulating complex concepts into layman’s terms I assumed that writing a technical definition would have been easy. I was surprised to learn it was more challenging than anticipated, specifically, writing without using jargon or overcomplicating the explanation. I learned that there were three types of definitions. The first two definitions were the easiest to write. Firstly, parenthetical definitions are the shortest and use parenthesis to quickly expand or clarify terms. Secondly, sentence definitions are slightly longer than parenthetical sentences and are used to describe expressions. Lastly, expanded definitions use diverse methods to illustrate the term’s meaning.

I used the four methods in my expanded definition, which I thought would be most educational. The method of Required Conditions describes what an fMRI does. Visuals illustrated the machine and the images it produces. The Operating Principle explained how the machine works, and finally, the method of Negation demonstrated what an fMRI does not do. The most challenging to write was the Operating Condition method. It conventionally includes large amounts of jargon. It also required that I research precisely how an fMRI machine works and break down each step into comprehensive concepts. I struggled to write the least complicated explanation, and it took several attempts and revisions before getting it right. I chose to let a family member (who had no expertise in this field) read it before publishing it to gauge my success.

Peer Review Process

After our team had completed their definitions, I partnered with Michael Ly. We reviewed each other’s writing, and each provided feedback about the style and content. I admired the conciseness of my peer’s definitions and tried to apply that to my assignment. His formatting techniques (bolding instead of italicizing every subheader under the Expanded Definition) made the reading process undemanding and inspired me to see how I could improve my blog layout. I suggested making his Compare and Contrast method more coherent, which would help the audience envisage a clearer picture of Akathisia. My partner provided valuable feedback, especially regarding the Operating Principle section. He pointed out that hemoglobin was jargon and encouraged me to rewrite it differently. He recommended formatting tips and suggested some introductory/transitionary sentences to improve flow. Overall, I appreciated the peer review process. It gave me a new perspective and shined a spotlight on my blind spots (like too much jargon). Admittedly I found providing balanced (positive and critical) feedback challenging; I valued the tone of Michael’s review.

Revision Process

After the peer review, I received feedback to implement. My partner provided clear suggestions, and they were straightforward to execute. Michael had suggested advising the reader why an fMRI scanner is loud and small, which forced me to spend some time researching the answers to provide a correct definition. I successfully removed the jargon, namely the word hemoglobin, and simplified the concepts. I also reformatted my document with bold headings and rearrangement of the images, which improved visual appeal. My writing was clearer and easier to read post the revisions. I am grateful for the feedback and see the value of peer reviews. It was an enjoyable challenge to undertake.

Link to Original Definition

Link To The Peer Review

Link to Revised Definition