Introduction

For unit 3, we were tasked to finish conducting our survey results, work on the formal draft of the report, and collaborate with our team members once again to review each other’s reports.

Formal Draft Report

As we approach the last few weeks of the technical writing course, unit 3 was the unit where we were applying all the learnings we have aggregated throughout the course.

I first started with engaging peers to complete the survey I had drafted. I had to ask a lot of friends and even their peers to retrieve enough samples to start the investigation. Because a lot of BCS students had friends who were taking this course, it was difficult to ask as many of them had completed them recently as well. To gain a further understanding of the numbers, I also wanted to conduct an interview to gain more perspective about the data. Therefore, I decided to conduct an additional interview after the survey was complete. Unfortunately, I first had difficulty asking for time from my friends for an interview as most students were busy with midterms. After asking my friend for her time, I was able to get her consent to finish the interview portion of the research.

After I retrieved all the information, I first started by analyzing the understanding the responses. I wanted to make sure that my viewpoint did not interfere in the analysis portion of the research therefore, I focused on looking at the empirical numbers so to objectify the responses. After my analysis of the data was done, I visualized it using excel and started to research some of the questions I had while researching to understand if there were any scholarly journals or articles that I could reference to enhance my understanding of affordable food visibility and affordability of UBC. Through secondary research, I was able to strengthen my arguments and provide a better solution.

Because the report not a short writing, I kept another document where I had the overall outline with the sub-headers and added bullet points beneath to organize my thoughts. Then, I proceeded to write the draft of the report. As I had a lot of assignments in the same week, I was not satisfied with how the draft turned out. Therefore, I plan to make a lot of revisions to the final report.

Peer Review Process

For the peer-review process, I was a bit anxious with Jake reviewing my work as I was unsatisfied with the draft I had written. There were grammatical errors that I knew I needed to improve on and wanted to strengthen my arguments as well. Surprisingly, Jake gave me a positive review of the current draft and also provided me with great suggestions such as removing negatives and adding sections correctly. Just as I did during the past peer review sessions, I learned greatly from this process.

Furthermore, when I was reviewing Jake’s paper, I found out that I could analyze my survey results more and make more figures to support my paper. I learned a lot about current technical students’ hiring process in labs and the current state of shortage as well. Jake also supported his arguments well with his data and I saw the need to incorporate his strengths for my final draft.

Conclusion

Unit 3 was the most challenging task so far. At first, I was confused about where I would start with the analysis and had trouble organizing my thoughts as there were too many data points. I have learned a lot during the peer-reviewing process and am excited to incorporate all the learnings in the final draft of the report.