It was no joke when the course introduction mentioned this is an intensive online course. Through this learning process, I have found my writing to have improved drastically. This is achieved through hours of practice, reading my peer’s work and most importantly receiving constructive feedback from my writing team. I have highlighted my biggest takeaways in each section below. 

Importance of outlining

It is very easy to get lost, forget what you are trying to write and why you are writing. This is especially true during writing long reports. I have written many reports before just impatiently diving in blind. Being too excited to get started can be a bad thing as the report usually being too fluffy and being not specific enough.

This is not the case while writing my final report. This course has helped me build the habit of writing an outline. Following it is the easy part with the harder part being creating the outline itself. Trying to capture the essence of what I am trying to communicate takes more energy mentally. Perfecting the arrangement of arguments, supplementing with proof, explanation, and choice of the visual aid is the hard part. However, investing this energy upfront is a lot more efficient and the payoff is a clear, coherent and concise report. Writing the report became easy as each paragraph, each sentence has a purpose. I would even argue that writing the report was the easiest part, I only have to think about word choice instead of focusing on what I am trying to communicate. This has a significant effect on my final report in helping it becoming more coherent and consistent. 

Setting writing goals and write with purpose

I used to be unhappy reading my work. This unhappiness stems from the fact that even I get lost in my writing. Writing with purpose is something I lack and want to improve on coming into this course. I am happy to say I have made progress in doing so as you can tell from my previous section talking about my realization in the importance of outlining. Outlining is the skill I lacked and it took me a long time to realize that is what I needed. I have created outlines before but I didn’t believe in it, I didn’t utilize the full benefit of it. But now something has clicked, I think it is from the intensive writing schedule required of me through this course. The combination of practice with theory allowed me to finally understand what I should be doing. Understanding this proper way of writing is huge for me, for that, I will have to thank this course. 

Ask for feedback and learn from it 

Asking for feedback used to be horrifying for me. Being vulnerable to judgment is the hurdle I couldn’t comprehend. But this course forces you to be open, to feel comfortable to accept the judgment and most importantly learning from it. Accepting other’s criticism and vision of what they believe words should be arranged is eye-opening. Widening my perspective on different writing habits and word choices. This has been an interesting experience that has prepared me for more to come!