Monthly Archives: December 2015

Creating my web folio was a very useful learning experience. In the department of computer science, we have a e-portfolio competition every year and students are encouraged to make a web folio and apply. I never really thought about making a portfolio because I thought that a resume and a LinkedIn page would be enough. However, when I started job searching and talking to recruiters, I realized that a lot them expressed that they would like to find out more about me which included demos of the personal projects I have worked on. I am glad that we are given the opportunity to build a web folio to demonstrate some of the best works we have worked on in this class.

I decided to start off with creating pages and writing some brief notes on the things I will be putting on the page later. Having a layout before I started writing greatly helped me stay focused on the purpose of each page. The most difficult part was writing concise and personalized descriptions for each piece of work I wanted to show. I constantly thought about how to introduce the purpose of the piece of writing and at the same time add a personal touch to it by telling the reader what I learned from the exercise.

I started with the Home page because it is the first page a reader will encounter when they visit my web folio. I decided to add a picture of myself because I want the reader to have a sense of who I am and knowing how I look seems more welcoming. I then added a bit more about the purpose and which tabs they could click on for finding more information about me. I hope these navigation tips can engage the reader as it can be overwhelming as there is quite a bit on information on this web folio.

The page that I was most excited about was the Technical Projects page as it gave me the chance to show off some of the projects I have worked on. Most of the time we are only able to give links and brief descriptions on our resume. On this page, I can give links that the readers can easily click on to see a demo of the project. I will definitely be keeping this page up to date with more projects after this course ends.

Time flies, I can’t believe the semester is coming to an end. English 301 is definitely the most written intensive course I have taken in my degree. It was challenging at first because English has always been my weakest subject. However, after writing multiple assignments a week, I realized that I was slowly improving. The format of the course forced me to continuously improve on the pieces of writing I have written. I find that it is a good habit to have because we don’t want to get some suggestions on how to improve but never getting the chance to correct something.

The numerous peer reviews helped me understand how to look at someone’s writing and give them some suggestions to help them improve. I learned a lot about coming up with templates and reading repeatedly to see if there are any mistakes that I missed. This helped me greatly when I was writing because I learned to be more careful while proof reading. I find that reading something out loud helped me catch mistakes more easily. It also improved my weakness of being too wordy. I saw that my team members were more concise in their writing. I slowly started to be more aware and tried expressing the same content using less words.

My goal after finishing school is to be a software developer and hopefully own a software consulting business one day. The writing with “YOU” attitude we learned will definitely help as I will be communicating with co-workers and clients on a daily basis. When I was going through the process of applying to coop jobs last year, I often had to apply to 5 or more postings a week. I was overwhelmed trying to create application packages for the applications. I ended up getting rejected for quite a few jobs. Now, I know how to write tailored cover letters and resumes for each job. In addition, the web folio I created would have been a good addition to the application package.

I wish I took this course before going on co-op because the formal report would have really helped me with the final research report and the various documentations I had to write for the projects I completed. It was a long process but all the small assignments like the proposal, outline, progress report and draft helped me structure and write a professional report.

The most important thing I gained from this course is confidence in my writing. It was one of my weaknesses before the course. Confidence is important because a lack of it made me stress over little things and made the writing process more painful. Now, I try to enjoy the process of writing and editing.

Thank you Dr. Paterson for giving us guidance throughout the course and my helpful LLDJ team members for all the support.