2 Park Drive
Toronto, Canada, L4A 4K1
September 17, 2020
ENGL 301 Students
University of British Columbia
2329 West Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4
Dear ENGL 301 Peers,
I am writing this letter today to be considered for position as a group member in a writing team. I am currently a third year BCS (Bachelor of Computer Science) student at the University of British Columbia completing my second degree. As an alumnus from the University of Toronto with a degree in Biochemistry and Human Biology, I have ample experience writing formal lab reports and have taken my fair share of English courses during my time there. I believe my former undergraduate experience in which I have written many reports, would be a valuable asset to an ENGL 301 writing team.
As a BCS second degree student, I am interested in pursuing a career in computer science and possibly combining my previous field in biochemistry with computer science. I have previously worked at Sanofi Pasteur as a Co-Op student where I was part of the research and development department. My unit focused on DNA sequencing and analyzing/interpreting large genome data sets. This experience is what first sparked my interest in computer science. After graduation, I was able to secure a full-time position at the same company as part of the quality control department. However, after a year of work, I realized I could not ignore the interest that I developed for computer science and decided to pursue a second degree as a BCS student at UBC.
Given my background in natural sciences, my writing skills leans more toward the technical side such as creating reports and discussion of results. In contrast, my creative writing skills (poetry, literature) can be considered one of my weaknesses as I am relatively inexperienced compared to my technical writing capabilities. However, for the ENGL 301 course, I believe my inexperience in creative writing should be no issue as we focus more on the technical writing aspect.
My preferred learning method is to complete practice problems or create a project that uses the concept I want to learn. For example, I created a web scraper and a clone of the Flappy Bird game to improve my Python skills. As a result of my learning strategy, I am someone who can learn new concepts and ideas relatively quickly. Therefore, if a new writing challenge presents itself in this course, I am confident in my ability to adapt and learn to produce the best effort I can for the writing team.
If my experience and background satisfies your needs, please consider my application and reach out to me via email at kokelton@student.ubc.ca. I look forward to hearing back from potential teammates.
Sincerely,
Elton Kok
301 Elton Kok Application letter