Unit Three Reflection Blog

Unit 3 assisted me with building an understanding of writing with a “You-Attitude”. The first assignment was writing and responding to a business letter. The process of writing an informative and professional complain is beneficial when you want to communicate coherently to a customer service agent so that your needs are properly met. This is especially important as I mature and have to take on more responsibilities in life. Learning the differences between writer centric and reader centric helped me greatly with improving my writing skills.

The second assignment was completing my formal report draft. I found this to be quite difficult because I needed to personally reach out to individuals in order to complete my surveys and interviews. I spent a lot of time trying to organize my data and come up with a coherent strategy in my formal report draft. After completing my report I went on to review Erfan Ahmed’s formal report draft. In the process of reading his I learned a lot about how I can improve my own formal report draft.

All in all, I learned a lot about our current environmental issues and better ways to improve my writing using technical writing techniques.

Below is a copy of my formal report draft.

ENGL_301_FInal_Report_Draft_Jason_Smith

Unit Two Reflection Blog

I started off this unit working on my LinkedIn profile. I’ve been using LinkedIn since high school and it’s where I found a lot of job opportunities, read a lot of content and introduced myself to many people. Starting at the beginning of this unit I’ve learned a lot of practical technical writing skills which I can apply to my professional life. I focused deeply on what I’ve previously had on my LinkedIn profile and found ways to dramatically improve it. The assignment for ENGL301, allowed me to reflect back at what I’ve created on LinkedIn.  I’ve also defined a new set of criteria for me to critique LinkedIn pages in the future, which will be extremely beneficial for the purpose of career search.

During the second part of this unit I was working on my research proposal. I have always wanted to analyze ways to improve nwHacks at UBC. The opportunity to work on an analytical approach to improve student submissions is going to be great for the future success of this event. After completing this research proposal, I surely hope that the quantity of submissions increases multiple fold.

Unit 1 Reflection Blog

In unit one we focused working on developing our skills writing professional letters, memos and emails. We also practiced writing techniques that apply across technical and professional practices. In particular, the definitions assignment that I worked on is the first assignment that I gave a peer review.

For my definitions assignment I decided to describe the term “Distributed Systems”, because it is a term commonly used in my current workplace. As a Software Engineer, you often have to convey complex terms and scenarios to a less technical crowd. Developing my ability to describe a complex term such as “Distributed Systems” will most definitely assist my communication skills in the workplace.

During the peer review I reviewed Eric Chang’s definition of “Imaginary Numbers”. I found this term to be fairly intriguing because it is a term I’ve previously worked with in some math courses I have taken. All in all, I thought Eric’s definition was very concise and provided clear examples, however I provided a few suggestions for improvement.

Email Memo

MEMORANDUM

To: Dr. Erika Paterson

From: Jason Smith

Date: Sep 18, 2019

Subject: Letter of Application for Student Writing Team

I writing this memorandum to inform you that I have completed my ENGL 301 team writing application.

The application letter includes my past work experience, strengths and weaknesses and my philosophy of learning techniques.

Please let me know if you require additional information from me.

Best,

Jason Smith

Enclosed: Application Letter

ENGL301-Application-1