As Technical Writing draws to a close, I am thinking back on what I’ve learned over the last few months. I came to this course feeling relatively confident about my writing abilities, but quickly realized that there was a lot more for me to learn than I had expected!

One of the biggest things that I had to work on was my “technological literacy” – learning how to use online resources to distribute information. I found this quite ironic as I’m 22 years old and relatively active on social media; I thought I knew it all when it came to online platforms! It was eye opening to realize all the ways that technology is used for professional purposes. For example creating a LinkedIn profile was probably one of the best things I’ve done for myself professionally, and I likely wouldn’t have done it if the course hadn’t forced me to! I’ve made so many connections with professors, peers, and former employers, and I’m looking forward to using this resource when it comes time to apply for permanent professional positions.

I found that sometimes my assignments could have included more detail – I received several comments on this throughout the term, and it is one of the big things that I am taking away from this course. Going into Law, I know that I will need to be much more detail oriented in future when it comes to analysis of cases.

However, I also received a lot of good feedback on my assignments. For the most part they were fairly polished, and I was proud of the comments that I received on the quality of my work. I have always believed myself to be a strong writer, and this course reinforced and strengthened those skills further. Writing skills are crucial to success in the legal profession, and the type of writing involved is extremely technical in nature. The skills I learned in this class are therefore immediately applicable to my career goals. The professional tone and formatting that we learned in this course were particularly helpful, and I know that I will put them to use in my future career. I certainly couldn’t have written a properly formatted memo before this class, and now memos are like second nature to me!

Overall, I really liked this course. It was challenging in ways that I didn’t expect – it was certainly a more difficult course than I thought I had signed up for (in a good way!). Writing for a professional setting is so different from academic writing, and I’m grateful to have had plenty of practice in English 301.

Creating this web folio was a daunting task – it was the last assignment we had to tackle, and was a true culmination of all of the things we had learned over the term. We were asked to include certain assignments from the course in the web folio, but this was also by far the loosest structure that we were given for a major assignment. The web folio could be anything we really wanted it to be – that’s what made it so challenging!

I started out using the “bones” of the student blog I’d made at the beginning of the course. I really liked the outline and structure of the website, but I also added a few new pages to fill the requirements for this assignment (i.e. the resume and writing sample pages). I also modified the website to be more personal as a whole. I wanted it to reflect who I am as a person, not just as a student and employee. My academic and professional successes are immensely important to me, but employers are looking for individuals, not robots (at least the ones I want to work for!). I sprinkled some images from my personal trips around the site, and tried to give my work an identifiable voice that would run through every post and every page.

The biggest change that I made to the blog was making it more “searchable.” This meant inserting links into the posts that I’d written to make it easier for the reader to learn more about my skills, interests, education, and experience. This medium wasn’t something I had worked with in a professional context before, though I do write my own style blog as a hobby in my free time. I tried to keep in mind the elements of blogs that I like to read – I realized that pictures and links make reading an article or post a more interactive and enjoyable experience. I had to maintain a “You” attitude toward the reader, even though I was writing all about myself! It was a strange exercise in that way, but it was a helpful to remember that employers are looking at the blog to see what I could bring to them. I wanted to highlight myself, but in a way that kept in mind the ultimate purpose of a web folio – making oneself an appealing candidate!

When I went back to edit my work, I was pleased overall with what I’d already put together! I made a few edits based on the feedback I’d been given in my peer reviews, but I found that I needed to make relatively few fixes. I focused more on polishing my assignments and proofing what I’d written for any mistakes. I would be happy for any employer to see the work I’ve put together in this web folio – I really do feel that I’ve done myself justice with the content.

This unit marked the first time we had to tackle one of the term’s major assignments: the formal report. I chose to do my project on UBC’s Blood For Life Club and the blood drives that the club operates. I thought that this was a cause that needs more attention, especially on a university campus; getting more young people to donate helps to increase the ever-shrinking donor base in Canada. As a regular blood donor this cause is near and dear to my heart, and I found that it was easy to do the research on something that I was so interested in! This, of course, is also a great lesson for life in general – when you do things you like, you feel more fulfilled, and getting them done is a lot less of a struggle.

As I mentioned before, the research was an incredibly interesting stage for me. As an Arts student, most of the research that I have performed in my degree has been at the library; for this project, I was actually collecting data from my fellow students. It was challenging to write the questions for my survey in a way that would allow me to collect the information that I needed, but once the responses came in, it was neat to see how well they fit my predictions. However, some of the responses were quite surprising. I was glad that Benjamin had mentioned in his review of my proposal that I should look into extending the dates and times of the blood drive, as this was definitely a priority for many of the respondents!

Organizing the report was the easiest part of the process. I looked at examples from the textbook and the course website, and found that the standard formula fit my own report well. The most difficult thing about this task was that not all of my interviews had been conducted at the time I wrote the draft! This meant that I had entire sections of the report that simply couldn’t be filled out yet, and put me slightly behind schedule. However, I have now collected all my data and am prepared to finish my report in the coming weeks.

I was especially looking forward to the peer review this week, as I wanted to double check that I was on the right track. The report that I reviewed was excellent; it was clear, concise, and made excellent use of formatting and visuals. It was extremely helpful to my process in that it gave me an example of excellent work to emulate. It’s also great to see what the other students are working on. Benjamin’s report focused on bike theft, which is a huge problem at UBC; it’s great to see that someone is working on a solution. This made me excited to give my own report to the Blood for Life Club. I hope that I can help them increase their donations through my work in this course! It’s awesome that the work we are doing in this class can actually be used constructively in real world applications.

During this unit I finally did the inevitable: I created a LinkedIn profile. It seemed as though I was the last person in the world to make one, as I was immediately fielding connection requests from former employers, professors, and classmates alike. Being on LinkedIn is just like having an online, interactive resume, and overall I enjoyed the process of putting it together.

A screenshot of what part of my LinkedIn profile looks like.

The feedback that I received was very constructive; I took the time to reorganize my profile and include skills that were less common, like my knowledge of the phonetic alphabet. Some skills seem more relevant than others, but you never know what an employer may be looking for.

The formal report came into focus during this unit, and at first I was not sure about what topic to explore. Eventually I landed on the topic of campus blood drives; they tend to receive a great response online, but a lower turnout at the event itself. I decided to investigate potential methods of increasing the number of donors at future events. I was proud of the formal report proposal that I wrote; I took my time writing and editing it, and the feedback I received on my peer review reflected that. The only concrete suggestion given by my classmate was to “determine the feasibility of extending the duration of each blood drive.” I took this into account and made a minor change to the document, but otherwise kept things much the same. My next step is to start collecting primary data, and I’m excited to get started — and stay on track!

When editing my colleague’s report proposal, I realized the importance of editing. It is crucial for a proposal to be concise, yet informative; the reader should be able to find all the necessary facts without having to scan through for the information. I suggested that my partner fine tune his proposal by reorganizing it slightly and providing more information about the project itself. I was very interested in the topic that he had chosen to explore, which is incredibly important as well – all the editing in the world won’t help if the topic is not worth pursuing.

Peer Review of My Proposal

Peer Review of Ben Chow’s Proposal

Updated Report proposal ENGL 301

I can’t believe that today is February 1st and the first unit of Technical Writing is already over! We have covered a lot of ground in the month since term began. The major assignment of unit one was to write three different definitions of a relatively complex term from our area of academic expertise. Being a Political Science major, I chose to define the term “critical theory.” I soon discovered that the assignment was not as simple as I had initially thought. It was difficult to explain the term for a non-expert audience, especially because critical theory is so deeply bound to other theories and concepts in Political Science. Creating a concise definition that would adequately describe what the term meant was certainly a challenge.

My initial definition was fine, but needed some improvement. I was fortunate to receive good constructive criticism on my assignment from my teammate JM, which you can access here. He suggested that my definition had a good base but had room for improvement, particularly in terms of making it more accessible for a non-expert audience. To do this I simply added more content and context to the definition, making it clearer for the reader how critical theory functions as a theory. I also labelled the image that I had selected to ensure that the reader understood its relevance to the topic. Through doing this, I learned that making a piece of writing simpler to read is the best way to reach a larger audience and properly communicate the writer’s purpose.

When critiquing JM’s work, I focused on the relevance of the content he had included in his definition. While he suggested that I expand on my definition further, I suggested that he cut fairly large pieces of his. Though his work was overall very strong, the definition lost focus somewhat towards the end. It was interesting to look at the assignment from a reader’s perspective as it helped me to understand what the audience was looking for.

Link to JM’s Evaluation

Link to Revised Definitions