In unit 3 of English 301 we completed the first draft of our formal report. We conducted research on our topic and explored the process of bringing together figures, text and references to create our first draft.

Overall I very much enjoyed the process of creating my formal report draft. Formal reports are not something that I have a lot of experience writing so creating the necessary components was something new for me. I had to invest quite a bit of time in researching not only my topic but also how to compose a formal report. In the end I think the first draft came out quite well and I am satisfied with my formatting and content.

Another interesting component of the formal report was conducting surveys with students. This was another thing that I had no experience doing and was an enlightening experience. I found a little bit of difficulty getting people to complete my surveys quickly as I was crunched for time with the deadline of the first draft. Overall the surveys went quite well and students seemed to be willing to fill them out with a little bit of a reminder from me.

Putting together the first draft was a satisfying experience. Creating figures and outlining the problems and possible solutions with the body of the report was something that I enjoyed doing. The final product came out as I wanted it to and I cannot wait to see what it looks like after revision and peer editing.

 In Unit 2 of English 301 we created our LinkedIn profiles and tailored them to the best of our ability for professional networking. We practiced the peer review process and selected a project for our formal report. We selected a topic of our own choice and created a proposal outlining our methods of data collection and a schedule for completion of these tasks.

I enjoyed the process of creating a LinkedIn profile and tailoring it to appeal to potential employers and other professionals. The process of creating the profile caused me to look inwards on my personal attributes and delve deeper into my desire in the professional world. This assignment forced me to update my application information and apply it to LinkedIn’s structure. Applying information about myself somewhere other than just on a resume allowed me to look at it from a different angle and make it more accurate and efficient. At times it felt like creating my LinkedIn was more just me editing my resume.

Similar to creating a resume and applying for jobs, creating a LinkedIn profile was at times stressful and frustrating. Most of my frustrations stemmed from the idea behind LinkedIn as a social media platform for job hunting. LinkedIn is a difficult platform to work with because you cannot tailor your page to a single job or single employer. Pages remain quite generalized and at time it feels as if there is no personal connection with anyone that you connect with. With LinkedIn you are forced to generalize your profile to a category or “stream” of jobs. The simplicity and efficiency of LinkedIn is a definite positive however. LinkedIn makes it incredibly easy to network passively and just get your face and information out there.

Preparing my report proposal was an enlightening and enjoyable experience. I enjoyed the freedom of being able to choose a topic that I am passionate about rather than having one given to me. Through this report I will be able to address what I believe is a real issue at UBC and potentially create the means to resolve the issue. So far I think the report is going very well and according to schedule. I am worried about the formatting of the final report and how it will all come together. Will we be given a template or outline?

The peer review process as a whole has been a good way for me to look at my work in a different way and see how others are doing their work. It is helpful to have a second opinion on your pieces of writing and allow others to catch things that you may not have in writing and in the editing process. I have learned that I often look at questions with too narrow of a perspective and need to take into account other perspectives and ideas. Peer reviewing my partner’s proposal gave me some good ideas for my own proposal and a different perspective to look at my own proposal with. It was interesting to see how Blaine structured his research process versus how I structured mine.

Attached below are my updated report proposal and the peer review of my original proposal.

Eric Driver- Formal Report Proposal (updated)

http://engl301.arts.ubc.ca/2017/02/10/assignment-21-peer-review-for-eric-driver/