Unit 2 kicks off the Formal Report and the Application Package process for the course English 301. Students are tasked with brainstorming and writing the formal report proposal, creating a professional profile on LinkedIn and continuing the process of peer reviewing and memo writing. This is the Reflection blog on my learning experience throughout this unit.

For the report proposal, brainstorming the topic was the hardest task for me. There were too many options and it was difficult to narrow down a realistic problem that I felt most confident in researching about. I ended up choosing to write about the participation of Geological Sciences students in the UBC Co-op Program, which I had the most experience and connections with. I felt comfortable with this topic because I agonized over it a few times throughout my co-op experience, but writing the proposal and outline was not that simple. I kept writing and rewriting because I was not satisfied with my word or question choices. Although writing the proposal and outline were not easy, they served as good guidelines for my future formal report and kept me on track with the course workload without feeling overwhelming.

I originally thought the process of creating a LinkedIn profile would be the easiest and fastest because I already had a profile. In contrary, the researching assignment helped me realize how incompetent and unutilized my profile was. I did not have a lot of visual aspects and I missed out some important sections in my profile. I also realized my profile was too professional that I forgot to show my personalities. Hence, I decided to write a longer and more personal summary section to impress my audience. This assignment taught me that it was not easy to create a professional social media network that can capture the audience’s interest and I need to use and update it more often to fully optimize this professional social media platform.

I enjoyed the proposal peer review assignment in this unit. Unit 1 taught me to be more aware of important things such as the audience, positivity, tone or organization in writing. For my peer reviews in this unit, I tried to use more headlines and bullet points as well as detail explanations to increase clarity. I also found that each of my team members possesses some writing strengths that I would like to learn from, such as how to write more concisely or use a wider variety of words. All in all, I think the process of writing, giving/receiving peer reviews and rewriting receiving peer reviews is challenging but rewarding, and my writing skill is slowly improving with time and practice.

Enclosure:

Jenny Bachynski’s Peer Review of my Formal Report Proposal

301 Thu Vo Revised Formal Report Proposal