Writing a memo with YOU attitude is a rewarding process. I have never realized that using “you” in a memo or peer review can be rude, condescending, and unprofessional. While practicing writing with YOU attitude, I learned to give suggestions without insulting the reader. This is very useful because making suggestions is essential and unavoidable while working in a team.
Writing a complaint letter and bad-news letter is a good practice as well. Since I don’t have experience composing these two letters, at first, I struggled with the tone and word choice. It’s challenging to be polite but also make my point firmly. I believe with more practices I will be more comfortable writing these kinds of the letter.
I have spent quite some time writing my formal report draft. I have collected enough data in time. However, then I realized my sample is very unrepresentative. My survey is supposed to be for all UBC students and reflecting their thoughts and opinions. Instead, almost 1/3 of the participants in my survey are in Computer Science major. Consequently, the survey results cannot strongly indicate the problem I pointed out. Nonetheless, after adjusting some calculations, the new finding is ideal as it demonstrates the existing parking problem. Thanks to the outline I wrote earlier, I could quickly adapt my contents and add explanations for the unrepresentative sample. Even though I have made a mistake, I believe it’s still a good practice to explain it in the report and adjust the calculation accordingly. Moreover, analyzing other student’s opinions is a fascinating and educating process. I can not only practice my summarizing and evaluating skills, but also learn from other’s thoughts which gave different insights of the parking problem.
As usual, the peer review process helps me reflect on my writings. After reviewing Curtis’s draft, I realized that my introduction didn’t provide enough information to the readers. Curtis gave me helpful advice on my report draft as well. For example, some of my graphs are taking too much white space which makes the report look less coherent. Curtis also suggested me to use bullet points (rather than paragraph form) when displaying a series of statistics. This is a helpful suggestion because statistics can be confusing for readers if they are not listed correctly.
In conclusion, by practicing writing with YOU attitude, I have learned to make suggestions appropriately. After writing my report draft, I also learned to analyze survey results and draft a proper formal report.