Welcome to my personal and academic blog! This blog site will act as my primary platform for communication in English 301 (Technical Writing), an upper year UBC English course aimed at teaching methods and techniques in communications, both in written and online forms. These techniques are aimed at application in professional settings, and include building practical writing skills to be applied to abstracts, applications, proposals, formal reports, online communications, and networking. As the course itself is taught entirely through distance education, even the format and structure of the course are conducive to building these above mentioned skills. A strong online presence and ability to professionally and positively present yourself in this setting is key to success in the course.

As this is the final course of my undergraduate degree, it seems the perfect transition to more “real world” responsibilities and professional tasks to be building these extremely practical technical writing skills. Come September 2017, I will be beginning a thesis-based Masters of Science project and hence writing grant applications, proposals, abstracts, presentations, and communications will be very key components of my day-to-day workload. I hope to build a strong set of technical writing skills specifically applicable to an academic and research setting to be applied directly to my ability to present myself and my research as next fall approaches. I hope to apply these newfound understandings, beyond my own writing, to my ability to interpret and understand communications and technical writing written by others such as research papers and reports to be used and cited in my project. The ability to critically analyze and summarize the work and communications of others is, in my eye, almost as critical as the ability to write yourself. I am excited for both the potential challenges and learning opportunities this course is sure to bring.

– Hayley