Some Fireworks for Celebration!

Time flies by, and we have reached the end of this term. Looking back, I have learnt so much from this course. In terms of writing, I learnt about how to write email correspondence with appropriate tone, how to structure a research report, etc. I also gained practical career skills such as using LinkedIn effectively, writing proper resume and cover letters. Overall, this has been a fruitful term! 

I believe my strength mainly lies in person skills, thanks to my previous Co-op experience and on-going job-searching. Throughout the term, my amazing teammates and I had great time working with and learning from each other. Also, when learning about the LinkedIn best practices and creating the application package, I was able to build upon my previous knowledge and gain deeper understanding of what the employers want to see from our applications. In addition, I was able to quickly learn from the feedback and apply them in my writing. Although I got a late start in revising my writings, I was able to get them done quickly and appreciate the use of better writing techniques, such as writing with “You” attitude and having clear structure for peer reviews. 

As for weakness, my time management skill could definitely be improved. When writing the formal report, collecting survey data took too much time, and I was also caught in other courses. As a result, the quality of the final report was not as expected. Also, I should have paid more attention to details. There were times when we were asked to include the file being reviewed in our reflection or peer review, but I was careless and did not notice, causing inconvenience to the readers. These should have been avoided. 

In general, a lot of the skills I learnt are directly applicable to my career as a software developer. In job searching, having professional LinkedIn profile and application package would highlight my experience and make my profile stand out among other candidates. Actually, I was able to land a full-time job this term, and I would say my resume played its part well. At work, being able to write clear and concise technical documents would be a great asset, even my readers (fellow software developers) would have similar technical background. What is more, as more and more tech jobs are shifting to remote work, knowing the etiquette of writing professional emails would be a must-have skill.  

In the end, I would like to thank my teammates and Dr. Paterson for such an amazing term. Wish you all the best! 

Vancouver in Snow

I really enjoyed the process of creating this web folio. Initially I anticipated spending most of the time revising previous writings because I slacked and did not edit them as the term goes. However, I ended up spending a lot more time choosing between themes, browsing background pictures, and formatting my writings. The sense of accomplishment given by this progress is unparalleled. 

This theme brings a sense of sophistication, and I really like the pictures that come with it. In addition, I picked four seasons of Vancouver for four reflections. They are beautiful and shows the progression of time (and hopefully my writing skills). Also, each page was carefully formatted for better readability. 

I have never been good at designing. Even as a software developer, I avoided doing any frontend (interface that users interact with) work because I know it’s going to look bad, but this experience is special. Maybe I have picked up some design thinking along the way, or it’s simply because WordPress provides really good themes. I guess both. 

Apart from making it beautiful, I also thought about my target audience, and decided to make it a platform to showcase my technical communication skills – they are more and more needed in the tech industry these days, and having them is an asset.

Of course, a lot of effort was spent on revising and editing previous writings. Most of the editing involved using “You” Attitude, and it really soften the tone, making it more respecting. I regretted being careless and not using it in the first place. Revising memorandums and peer reviews is refreshing, and it makes me feel like pruning house plants – getting rid of the bad parts and leaves only the good-looking, meaningful parts. After editing, the improvement in quality is significant, and I was really happy. The whole editing process was a good review of all the techniques covered, including writing definitions, memos, peer reviews, email correspondence, etc. That’s indeed a lot of stuff! 

Finally, I hope you like my web folio. 

Autumn Vancouver – My Fav

We started this unit by reviewing an extremely unprofessional email from an arrogant student to his professor about course registration. Although I do not think people like Evan Crisp exist in real life, it is a good lesson for us to learn the etiquette of writing professional emails. For me, I am really happy that I haven’t made any mistake like those in Evan’s email for years, and I think this email will always be a reminder about how ridiculous my emails are going to be if I didn’t follow those etiquette. This assignment is followed by writing a complaint letter and bad news letter as a customer and a customer representative respectively. I have to say since I did not have too much experience (and hopefully will never have), it really taught me the appropriate tone for addressing these kinds of issues. Overall, I think these two assignments are practical, and directly applicable to my life. 

Then we started preparing for the formal report draft. The actual research progress was a bit frustrating, as I have been struggling with my other courses. I spent too much time on collecting the survey result, so this caused some delay on my data section. The lesson here is to do better time management when starting a big project. Also, there is a lack of secondary sources to support my views, especially in how these student-held activities could help preparing CS candidates for jobs. This is also reflected in Yang’s review, as he mentioned my secondary sources are a bit weak. I think the mistake here is that searching supporting secondary sources should have been done in drafting the research proposal, and an alternative solution should be considered when there is not enough evidence to support my original solution. In terms of organizing the material, I found it to be relatively easy, as I was able to divide them based on my outline, and a lot of the material is reusable from my proposal and progress report.

The peer review process taught me a lot. Yang and I worked on similar topics, and by reading his report I was able to immediately tell the shortcomings in my report. The first thing I noticed was the detailed recommendation part, and there are more secondary sources to support his view. Although this is partly because his solution focuses more on workshops, while mine is about a variety of activities. In terms of organizing the report, mine was slightly better because of the use of headings and sub-headings, but this is an easy correction for him.

One more thing I learnt after reading Dr. Paterson’s feedback from previous assignments was the importance of writing with YOU attitude. I was not paying enough attention to the feedback, and as a result, my previous peer reviews were filled with “I” and “my”, which sound self-centred and unprofessional. The rewrite example given by Dr. Paterson was a lot nicer. Although there is no more peer review assignment left for this term, I will definitely keep this in mind for my future writings.

To sum up, I think Unit Three is probably the most interesting unit so far and I really learned a lot. 

Enclosure: Yifan Wang – Formal Report Draft Final

Vancouver in Summer

We started the unit by brainstorming the ideas for formal report and writing a proposal for it. I decided to use my background in Computer Science and address a problem that I found very relatable – the disconnection between CS education in university and skills demanded by jobs. However, my first draft was very vague. I proposed the solution of setting up an AMS funded student club, without even knowing how it actually works. The main reason for this mistake was that I did not have a target audience in mind before thinking about the solution, and figuring out the target audience means knowing who is going to be responsible for addressing the problem. After giving it more thoughts, I believe it would be more realistic to let CSSS handle this issue. As a result, the target audience for my formal report is the president of CSSS.  

The peer review process is really helpful, and I believe I have learnt a lot from reading Samantha’s proposal and her peer review of my proposal. I really like her idea of improving the onboarding process for new hires. As someone who also had a fully remote work experience, I think this problem is relatable, clearly-defined, and (potentially) has a feasible solution. Her proposal is also well-written, with the right amount of detail given at each section and plain wording that is easy to understand. Compared to her proposal, mine contains some grammatical mistakes, and some sentences are too complicated. The problem statement is too long, and should have been divided into paragraphs. In general, I should pay more attention to the correctness and conciseness, as they are really helpful in improving the clarity of writing. 

The other important part for Unit 2 is about LinkedIn. I have created my LinkedIn profile a while back and have been using it extensively for networking as well as applying for jobs, but I still learnt a lot during researching the best practices and read other people’s memorandum. For example, I never knew that the heading section will be used by LinkedIn’s algorithms when recommending your profile to other people, and having a complete profile increases your chance of being discovered by other people. Doing this research gives me chance to further polish my profile. Also, I gained some new perspectives on connecting with other professionals. Before doing my research, I often send empty connection request to other people, and it is really a bad practice. I should have stated my background and my intention to show my respect and sincerity. I believe that at the end of this course, I can be a better user of LinkedIn. 

Please find the link to my revised proposal and outline below. 

My revised proposal:  Yifan’s Formal Report Proposal

My outline: Yifan’s Formal Report Outline