LinkedIn Profiles and a Formal Report Proposal
Unit 2 of English 301 was a very valuable experience as we created a LinkedIn profile and started producing our formal reports. Making a LinkedIn profile was very interesting to me as I have not made one before. I now realize how important it is to professional networking. A powerful LinkedIn profile requires attention to detail and the “10 Best LinkedIn Practices” memo that we were required to do helped me to better market myself to potential employers and colleagues. I now know which sections of a LinkedIn profile are the most important to recruiters, how to best display my skills/experiences and how to portray myself in a friendly yet personable manner. The vast amount of potential employers, recruiters and professionals on LinkedIn is amazing to me and as a student whom will graduate in December, I am very grateful that I am now apart of it.
Developing a formal report has been a challenging task. Throughout most undergraduate degrees, students are not required to write in such a professional manner. That being said, the writing of a formal report seems like something that will be a worthwhile experience for all students who are about to enter the workforce. I had a tough time thinking of a topic for my formal report. I noticed that most of my classmates chose a topic involving their place of work but since I am currently unemployed, I decided to choose a topic related to all UBC students. My original topic was “Determining the Feasibility of Increasing the Nutritional Information Available from Food Vendors at UBC”, however, Dr. Paterson believed that this was a problem that students have the ability to solve by themselves. After review, I completely agree. I then decided to focus my formal report on a problem that I have witnessed during my time as a volunteer at the Coast Mental Health Center ; “Improving the Social Lives of Patients at Coast Mental Health Center”. Being required to create an outline on this matter really helped me to determine if this was something worth writing a formal report on. It was originally difficult to document the steps of my formal report so far in advance but now I believe that this will only help as I work to complete it. I have concluded that “Improving the Social Lives of Patients at Coast Mental Health Center” is a strong formal report topic and I look forward to pursuing it. Nevertheless, I do question my ability to gather the data that I require by the deadline I set. Not everyone at Coast Mental Health is diligent in responding to emails. I also have concerns about being able to produce a 12-15 page report on “Improving the Social Lives of Patients at Coast Mental Health Center” as this just seems like a lot for a report of our scope.
I find that as we continue to conduct peer reviews, I learn more and more about the common mistakes that writers at the undergraduate level make and how to identify them. This ability stems from the peer reviews that I have received as well as the ones I have completed. While reviewing my partners formal report proposal, I was able to identify that not all of the problems stated were accompanied by a proposed solution. These type of oversight errors along with standard grammatical errors are the types of mistakes that seem to be easier to identify by peers. I have also learned through the peer reviews that I have conducted that I am able to spot grammatical/punctuation errors with ease. I hope this is of help to my classmates. The peer reviews that I have received have really helped hone in on the major flaws in my writing. I know that I am often too verbose in my writing and I also tend to not explain certain things that I am familiar with that I cant expect my audience to be familiar with. These issues are regularly identified in the peer reviews I receive and it serves as a great reminder of what aspects of my writing I need to improve on.
Overall, unit two has been a very busy unit. I am pleased that we have been able to gain experience creating LinkedIn profiles and writing formal reports because these are skills that will be applicable in the near future. I hope that as our class continues to write and review that we will improve our professional writing skills as well as improve the feedback we provide to our peers. Thank you for reading!