Category Archives: Uncategorized

As I reflect on my progress throughout the term, I can honestly say that I am pleased with my improvement. Not only did my writing improve, but I learned so much more about the fundamental concepts of professional writing that I did not know before. Things such as knowing when to acknowledge and emphasize the reader is a critical skill when dealing with other professionals.

I found that my writing at the beginning of the course had a different tone than it did at the end of the course. At the beginning of the course, my writing was much more casual and unprofessional. Before ENGL 301, I did not have much experience writing letters and reflections in a professional tone and that really showed at the beginning of the course. As the term progressed, I found that my writing slowly became better, though I also felt that I struggled to grasp how to write with a YOU-Attitude. Being better at knowing when to talk directly to the reader was a common comment on my work, and I feel like I finally understood how to address this issue near the end of the course. I also learned how to thoroughly edit the work of a peer throughout the course. I spent a lot of time reading my peers’ work over the term and I feel as though I gave better and better suggestions as the term progressed.

The skills that I gained in this course are directly beneficial to my future career in software development. In a position where many members of my team work remotely, knowing how to properly address co-workers and customers is extremely important.

I am very grateful to have taken this course and to learn valuable skills that are transferable to any career.

The Web-folio is the culmination of various projects over the term. The task was to create a website that showcased our progress over the term, and to gear the language for a target audience. My Web-folio includes a home page, bio page, blog page, LinkedIn page, resume page, application package page, and a page that has a few examples of my best work.

Creating my Web-folio was more tedious than I imagined it would be. I originally thought that the hardest part about the Web-folio would be deciding on the layout and preparing the website. I originally wanted to use a website called Squarespace to host my Web-folio because I liked the default layouts, though I ended up having issues registering for a free trial. I ended up hosting my website on UBC Blogs, since I already had experience with the platform. Since I had been using the platform all term, I felt quite comfortable creating a website from scratch. I really enjoyed making the layout for the website since it gave me an opportunity to be creative.

I thought that since I had already completed all of the content of the assignments that all I would have to do is put it all together. I found the hardest part of creating the Web-folio to be revising all of my assignments throughout the term to prepare them for the portfolio. I went back through all of the feedback that I got on my assignments and tried to incorporate the feedback into my works as best I could.

Even though creating the Web-folio was more tedious than expected, I really enjoyed the process of making the website and found it really helpful to reflect my progress throughout the term.

For unit three, I wrote the first draft of my formal report which included conducting interviews, sending out a survey, conducting research, and actually writing the draft. I also peer reviewed Jenny’s draft of her formal report and got feedback from Jenny on my report.

I found that writing the draft of my formal report was easier than I thought. I think that this was because I had already done some background research on the Science Undergraduate Society for unit two and had already created an outline for my report. Though I had previously never written a report, I have written scientific papers of similar length. The papers that I normally write heavily depend on what I find in literature, so I do not normally create an outline or plan out my work much beforehand. As I start researching, I typically also start writing so this was a new experience for me. Creating an outline and proposal really helped me to think about the design and purpose of my report before writing it, making it much easier to write once I actually began writing.

Conducting research for my report was surprisingly smooth since a large part of my information came from the AMS Election website. The data was already organized by organization and year, which made it really easy for me to use and visualize. I also created a survey which I sent to science students. I used Google Forms to make my survey and this made it really easy to use and distribute. I simply copied the link to my survey to online forums for science students and google compiled my results and created graphs for me to use in my report. Overall my survey came back with some interesting feedback and was really helpful in my report. My research also included conducting interviews with members of the Science Undergraduate Society. I was initially intimidated to approach members of the organization, though I found that they were all excited to talk about the organization and suggest ways to improve. The interviews gave me a much better idea of what the organization is currently doing to improve participation rates, and to see where I could make suggestions.

Organizing the report was smooth since the information seemed to logically flow together. First, I would give background information on the organization and then I would talk about the information I collected, and then propose ways to improve. The outline from unit two was really key in preparing this general flow of the report, though the smaller sub-sections and titles were made as I was writing the report according to what made the most sense at the time.

After writing my own report, I then peer reviewed Jenny’s formal report. As I stated in my last reflection, the peer review process is really helpful in understanding what is going through a reader’s head as they read my report. It was also interesting to see how different students approached the same assignment. I seemed to focus more on the data and what that meant whereas Jenny seemed to focus more on the implications of what change might do. I do not think that there is one right way to write the formal report and reading Jenny’s draft really helped me see where I could put more attention in my own report. It was also interesting to see the similarities between my report and Jenny’s. We both used Google Forms to create an anonymous survey to create visuals for our reports. I was glad to see another student using Google Forms as it is a really great tool for collecting data.

Overall, I am happy with the progress that I have made on the formal report, and the feedback that I got from Jenny on it. This unit has taught me a lot about writing with “You-Attitude” and to keep the reader in mind when writing. I look forward to the last unit of the course.

For unit two, I made a LinkedIn profile and worked on my formal report. This included making a proposal, an outline and a progress report for the formal report.

I found the process of making a LinkedIn profile for this course quite surprising. Prior to this course, I had a LinkedIn profile that I was quite happy with. I had received multiple job offers through my profile and had spent a lot of time previously editing it. What surprised me was that the LinkedIn best practices assignment was actually very helpful in recognizing where my own profile could be better. For example, I previously had all of my work experience on my profile including serving jobs since I thought that any experience was good experience. I learned that including irrelevant details on my profile made it look disorganized, so I removed all of the unnecessary work experience. I also had a lot of unnecessary details in the summary section. I also learned that asking coworkers for recommendations can be very helpful. I had never previously thought to ask coworkers for recommendations since I felt like my profile was good enough.

My peer review from Tom gave me additional feedback on my LinkedIn profile. He pointed out a few grammatical mistakes and also commented on how my writing could be a bit more precise. This comment on my writing has been brought up to me a few times in this course and is something that I am continuously working on.

I like the idea of a professional social media network because it allows you to keep up to date on organizations you are interested in or see what is new in a particular field without being distracted by friends and family. It also allows you to put a professional online image forward to coworkers and potential employers, but still allows you to engage with people that you know.

The formal report proposal was more difficult than I originally thought because figuring out the subject of my formal report was more challenging that I anticipated. Choosing a topic that I thought would have enough content for me to write a report on was not easy for me. I eventually chose to write my report on participation rates for the Science Undergraduate Society at UBC because it is an organization that I have had experience with in the past and has a lot of online primary data. The peer review from Amy of my proposal was very helpful as she highlighted sections that she thought were well done and pointed out areas for me to improve such as adding more examples to my recommendations and creating an anonymous survey.

The peer review process was also helpful in looking at my own writing from someone else’s perspective. Reading and commenting on Amy’s proposal showed me what stood out to a reader and how much detail is necessary. It was really interesting to read the other proposals on my team forum and to see what my peers had chosen to write about. This project highlights the diversity of the interests and hobbies of my group members, which is really cool to see.

I feel I have made good progress on my writing skills so far, especially after completing the outline. Deciding on how many sections to have and what would go in each section made the project feel much more organized. The outline was a great steppingstone towards completing the progress report since I had already laid out exactly what I would need and how I would complete each step of the report. My final recommendations will depend on the results of my survey and interviews, though I feel confident in the research and information about participation rates that I have collected already.

I thought that this unit taught me how to write for a variety of audiences. The three definitions assignment specifically helped me to write a constructive letter to a peer. I chose to write about the term “cache memory” since it is not a well-known term outside of computer science, but it is based on a concept that most people are familiar with. I thought that choosing a term that relates to a well-known concept would make it easier to explain it to an audience that is unfamiliar with the technical term. I also chose to include operating principle, history, visual, and compare/contrast sections in the expanded definition section. I started with the operating principle section because I thought that it was best to first explain what the principle of the term was about before explaining anything else. After that I thought that the history of cache memory should go next because by understanding why cache memory was invented, it would be easier to understand its role within modern computers. After that, I chose to have a visual because I thought that it would bring ideas together from both the history and the operating principles. Lastly, I included a compare and contrast section because I needed to explain the differences between main memory and cache memory. I used a well-known concept to help describe the term earlier in the assignment, but it is also important to explain the differences as well. I really enjoyed this assignment and getting to learn about so many other terms that I did not know about before.

When I got to peer review another student’s assignment, I learned that there are many different ways to approach an assignment. I peer reviewed Jenny Zhu’s assignment on cystic fibrosis and I was impressed by her creativity on choosing which sections to include in her expanded definition. I thought that she chose the sections that best fit her topic, rather than trying to make a pre-defined list of sections fit with her topic. I noticed that her use of visuals was particularly helpful and helped to further explain her topic. I found that reviewing another student’s assignment helped me to reflect on my own assignment, and to think about what a reader might be thinking when they read my assignment.

The feedback that I got on my assignment focused mostly on the bigger questions of my definition. While I was good at explaining the details of the concept, I did not always relate it to the bigger picture. Using Jenny’s advice, I elaborated on what an optimal strategy might be for cache memory and hinted at how modern computers actually solve the problem. I also elaborated more on the history of cache memory since the transition to using cache memory was not explicitly clear. I also added a longer description for the visual as Jenny suggested, which explained some of the components of the diagram. There were a few terms in the photo that I did not originally describe. Lastly, Jenny also pointed out that my compare/contrast section did not look ahead into the future as to whether computers could use only cache memory or not. I chose not to change this section because I already explained why we do not currently use only cache memory in computers.

In summary, I learned many ways in which I can make my writing better. I also learned that I do not always need to change every detail that a reviewer suggests. This process helped me see things from the point of view of the reader and to use this to fix weak spots in my own writing.