September 15, 2019
To my colleagues in English 301: Technical Writing,
Over the last week, I have been reading your blogs and biographies, getting a wonderful idea of the eclectic personalities and writing styles in this online classroom. Accordingly, so many of you have so much to offer my learning experience as writing team members, and I would like this time to formally apply as a professional writing team member amongst you.
My academic background in cultural studies caters to observing different positions with a critical and analytical gaze. In high school, I attended an advanced placement course called English Language Composition, which was a wonderful precursor to the material we cover in this class regarding audience, tone, clarity, and function. This class provides a strong foundation in rhetoric that has been well rounded through the various critical theory and analysis courses I have taken in my Undergraduate. One class I took in my third year, Geography 359 in Ethnographic Research, uses a team-based learning model that matches groups with an eclectic combination of people with complimenting strengths and weaknesses in the activities we carried out from our syllabus. This is something I would like to replicate in the writing team I will be a part of, as I found it a beneficial exercise in actively listening to other members’ feedback on my work, especially when creating a formal proposal as a team.
What I have to offer a team is a strong sense for framing and tone when catering to an audience as I peer review many works written by colleagues of different faculties, especially as a private tutor for the last six years. However, my strengths as a collaborator and editor do not mean I do not have areas to improve upon in my own writing. What I want to improve upon with a writing team is concision in my work. While I have a talent for helping others narrow their own ideas into a concise thesis, I have always tended to pick a thesis for a masters than a thesis for a comparative analysis essay. But having inspiration that fulfills a topic is never the challenge, so refining it will be a joyous process.
My professional experience as a team member goes beyond the academic forum. Outside of the university I work with teams of people from various departments, seniority, and expertise to put on concerts, festivals, and creating experiences for a clientele. Being an Audio-Visual Technician requires time management and dedication to a vision that is not always our own, but always requires detail-oriented analysis and coordination to carry out. Every department I work with, be it audio, video, or lighting, has an opportunity to learn something from the people who work outside your regular study.
Now I apply this learning philosophy to all group work as well. Learning should not end outside the classroom but should thrive because the most beneficial thing is to have eyes that haven’t been through the same degree as you read your work, they are the most objective sources you can find when reading concepts, you have worked with for years. If you share the same learning philosophy or perhaps compliment my own learning strengths and weaknesses, it would be an honour to work together learning from each others’ experiences in writing, audience, and tone.
Thank you for taking my application into consideration for your writing team. you can reach me at morganbrandt1@gmail.com and I look forward to learning from your work over the course of the term.
Respectively yours,
Morgan Brandt,
P.S. Below is the attached docx file of this post.