Reflecting on all the work I’ve completed in ENGL 301 this semester, I truly wish I had the opportunity to take this course in my first undergraduate degree. Of all the courses I have ever completed, ENGL 301 has been the most relevant to a professional setting and many of the skills learned here are transferrable to future workplaces. For example, in this course, students have the opportunity to learn how to properly write emails and create resumes and cover letters for job applications. When I first graduated, I did not learn any of these skills from previous post-secondary courses. In fact, when I started my first full-time job, I was taken aback by the differences compared to school. I had never sent so many emails daily and did not have a good sense of how to properly write these emails. Consequently, I learned mostly through trial and error and mimicking the styles of my colleagues. It was a very painstaking process and I wish I could have had the opportunity to properly learn and practice these techniques like we did in ENGL 301.

While some concepts such as resume building and emailing techniques I learned from my previous full-time job experience, I was still able to improve upon my current writing style and acquire new techniques from the concepts taught in this course. Firstly, upon entering this course, I knew one of my biggest weaknesses was not being concise. I know I tend to write too much and use unnecessary words at times. However, through the process of peer review and direct feedback from the professor, I started to learn how to cut down on my words and sentence structures. I can now stop myself from using unnecessary words or catch it afterwards in my proofread. Moreover, I learned the importance of writing with a you-attitude. Before this course, I had no idea what this term meant or how it applied to writing. However, after being shown the difference, I can see how effective it is to utilize this writing technique and will be incorporating it in my writing style moving forward.

Of all the assignments completed in this course, my favorite was by far the peer reviews. I was able to learn so much not just from the direct feedback from my peer, but also from reviewing someone else’s work. From marking a peer’s work, I realized mistakes made in my own papers and learned from their writing style. This was such a valuable learning process, and I will miss it after this course, since I know it is very rare that you get the chance to work on the exact same assignment as a peer in a workplace setting. Additionally, another project I enjoyed was the last one – the Web Folio. It was such a full-circle moment to review and edit all our previous works and then combine them into one platform. I saw how my writing style changed over the course and I was able to improve upon mistakes I had missed before. As I was designing my web folio, I wanted to ensure that it was both visually appealing and user-friendly. I believe I accomplished my goal as I incorporated a readable color scheme along with relevant pictures in each section. As well, I used many clickable links throughout the web folio to allow for easy navigation to different pages.

In conclusion, I have developed many new skills from this course that I will be incorporating into my current skill set. When I graduate from the Bachelor of Computer Science Program and enter the workplace again in the technology field, I believe that the technical writing skills I learned here will  strengthen my communication skills. I need to ensure that I can properly convey my software code and design to colleagues who will be working alongside me on projects. Strengthening my communication skills also helps to build more personal connections with my colleagues so we can work better as a team. In addition, while it won’t be exactly like the peer review process learned in this course, I will work together with my colleagues in checking why a program is not functioning properly. This process shares some similarities with the peer review process as we will be analyzing each other’s code and explain why it is not working. I look forward to utilizing my peer review experiences here.

Before I complete my last reflection, I just wanted to give a big thank you to my Twirling Gold Team Members and to my instructor Professor Erika Patterson. It was such a great experience working with everyone throughout this semester. I really enjoyed exchanging knowledge and values with all my team members and always received valuable feedback and quick responses from our instructor. Thank you everyone for working with me through this semester and I wish you all the best in the new year.