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.