Dale’s Unit Three Reflection Blog

Due to the nature of summer vacation when you’ve got kids, Unit 3 was the busiest one yet. I was unfortunately unable to complete the first letter to Evan, but I enjoyed coming up with both the complaint and bad-news letter in 3.1. I have written both types of letters before in my professional and personal life, but found the lessons in 3.1 to be quite useful in organizing and  formatting the letters. It was particularly fun to come up with a scenario where I was on both sides of the complaint, which offered insights into how a situation can be seen from multiple perspectives—an important insight to have!

For the Formal Essay Draft in unit 3.2, I found the outline and work I did previously to be incredibly helpful for both writing and organizing my draft. Generally in the past I just jumped straight into my essay writing and organized things as I went along. Having the essay topics, method and scope laid out beforehand made the whole process much easier, and is something I will do more of in the future. I didn’t find any surprises in the results from either my survey or interviews, but rather found it interesting to see my hunches backed up by the data. I still have to complete the abstract and letter of transmittal, but imagine the rest of the revision process to be relatively straight forward.

I found the Peer Review section of 3.3 to be the most challenging task in the unit. While my partner’s essay was interesting and relatable to my own life (I live close to the Costco they wrote about), the essay had some issues with organization and clarity, which made it hard to organize my own thoughts in such a way that would be useful for their revisions. I approached the review by organizing it into sections on grammar, organization, etc, and tried to find examples for each one of my recommendations. Hopefully my partner finds these comments useful. As for their recommendations on my essay, I was pleased to see that they enjoyed the report and will apply their recommendations. They did mention that some of the sections needed to be lengthened to meet the requirements of the essay, but didn’t specify which requirements (I assume word count, but with the upcoming abstract and letter of transmittal I should be in the zone outlined in the assignment) or what information needed to be expanded upon. I will take this feedback, however, and see where I can expand to the benefit of my arguments.

Enclosure: Dale-Miller-ENGL301-Formal-Report-Draft

Dale’s Unit Two Reflection Blog

Overall, unit two was challenging and enjoyable from both a “thinking” and “writing” perspective. The brainstorming process in particular took quite a bit of iterative thought. Working remotely and not having been on campus much over the past two years meant that my  exposure to different communities and organizations was limited and mainly online, which didn’t feel like an exciting premise for a research paper. I also wanted to make sure that my subject would lend itself well to both first- and second-hand research, be something that I had familiarity and access to, and perhaps most importantly be something that could help solve a real problem. My thinking focussed on something to do with COVID’s impact on the working world, and my eureka moment came when speaking to a co-worker about our company’s upcoming lease renewal. Once I decided on using my research paper to explore OP Media’s options for its office space and the challenges of in-office vs working from home and hybrid, the research proposal came together intuitively.

For the section on LinkedIn best practices, I have had a profile on that site for several years so I was already familiar with many of the ideas I found in my research. However, after conducting my research and then looking at my site, I realized that there were definitely some areas for improvement, in particular in the wording in which I presented my accomplishments (use more specificity, for example), and my lack of interaction with other people on the site.

Once again, my partner’s peer review proved to be useful when editing my proposal and refining it in the outline and progress report. Specifically, Harvey had some great points about explaining why the company couldn’t just continue on as-is, as well as fleshing out details that weren’t clear. Since I have a fairly well-formed idea of how I want to construct and research my paper, I found the progress report to be straight forward with the exception of the creation of the survey. Not having created a survey or used the survey software before, I found it challenging to put questions together in such a way that they both made sense individually, built on each other, and minimized redundancy. My first draft was not successful, but I took the feedback I received and made what I think are nice improvements. I did, however, run into a significant issue with my survey link not updating after I publish it so I’m hoping that will be resolved quickly.

Dale’s revised proposal can be found here. 

Harvey’s feedback on my proposal can be found here. 

Dale’s Unit One Reflection Blog

Writing the original definitions of the term “standup” was a straightforward process since I am familiar with the term both from school and work. As such, I was able to write both the parenthetical and sentence definitions from personal experience. The expanded definition, however, required me to also expand my knowledge base by researching the etymological, historical, operational and analytical aspects of the term. I found this process solidified my understanding of the term “standup” in context with the overarching concept of agile development.

The peer review was an interesting process as I both learned about the term angioplasty and was able to think more deeply about what makes a definition effective. I found my partner’s definition to be quite good overall, and quite well organized into sections with headers, which is something I didn’t do in my piece. I did find some of the words and transitions used a little confusing, as well as having some difficulty understanding how a “stent” fits into the definition of “angioplasty”, so I made some suggestions on how to make those explanations more clear in the revised version.

As for the peer review section, my partner was professional and polite and made some constructive suggestions on how to improve my definitions. Specifically, they suggested I make some edits for conciseness, which I did, as well as correcting my citations to match MLA style. They even included a suggestion on where to find this MLA information, which was very helpful. They also suggested changing the visual to be more specific to standups, which I considered but ultimately decided against since the visual I chose served the purpose of providing important context of where a standup falls into the agile framework that would be difficult to explain without an image. Without the context of the rest of the agile framework, an image of a “standup” alone, whatever that may be, felt like it would be too specific to add much value to the definition.

Dale’s Revised Definitions can be found here. 

Harvey’s Peer Review of Dale’s Definitions can be found here.

Email 1:

Hi Jessica,

Dale Miller

Email 2:

MEMORANDUM

To: Erika Paterson, Instructor, English 301
From: Dale Miller, Student <dmjmille@student.ubc.ca>
Date: May 30, 2022
Subject: Notification of posted Letter of Application

As requested in Lesson 1.2, this memo is to notify you that I have posted my letter of application for a professional writing team in English 301 to my course blog. Please find the complete letter attached to this memo, but I have summarized my letter for your convenience below.

Introduction:

• Current and previous fields of study, as well as my previous career.
• Anonymous “recommendations” to foster connection, and also highlight some of my strengths.

Body:

• List of my professional interests and values.
• List of English-related strengths I gained from my previous career.
• List of weaknesses in my experience and some time limitations I might have for the summer semester.
• My learning philosophy, which includes a focus on collaboration with my classmates.

Conclusion:

• Reiterate my experience, teamwork values, and desire to join a productive professional writing team.
• Contact info and suggest a specific course of action.

Thanks very much for taking the time to read this, please let me know if you have any questions.

Enclosure: 301 Dale Miller Application letter

English 301 98A
University of British Columbia
2329 West Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4

May 30, 2022

Dear classmates of English 301 98A,

Please consider my application to be your professional writing teammate for the summer session of English 301. I am nearly completed my second degree in UBC’s Bachelor of Computer Science program, also have a degree in Political Science, and was an editorial director at a publishing company for 15 years. My former colleagues would tell you that I’ve never missed a deadline and previous teammates at UBC have described me as “super easy to work with,” so I’m looking forward to continuing that trend with you this summer.

My professional interests lie in clear communication and completing tasks correctly and on time. I also place a high value on having a fun and productive rapport with my teammates. Through my experience in publishing, my strengths include being a strong writer and editor, and having experience mentoring others as they develop their own skills. One of my weaknesses in relation to this course would be that my experience is mainly related to journalistic writing, however, I am looking forward to learning some new skills in the field of professional writing. Another challenge that I have this summer is a busy schedule outside of school, as I am working full time, so I will need to join a team that values efficiency and timelines.

Through my studies in CS at UBC, I’ve developed the learning philosophy of working hard on my own but also collaboration with my classmates when we run into challenges. I value having classmates who I can ask for help and enjoy helping others when they need help themselves. I find both actions can lead to a deeper understanding of the course material, as opposed to just grinding it out on your own.

Through my previous experience and willingness to communicate well, work hard, and complete tasks on time, I feel I would be an ideal professional writing teammate for English 301.

If you have any questions or an interest in teaming up, please do not hesitate to contact me at dmjmille@student.ubc.ca.

Sincerely,

Dale Miller

301 Dale Miller Application letter

This is my first blog post