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Before starting the course, I was intimidated as I felt that my writing was not clear enough and that I may not succeed in the various writing assignments throughout the course. However, ENGL 301 turned out to be my favorite course at UBC as I believe this course is very rewarding and useful for pursuing a career in software development.

Throughout the term, ENGL 301 has significantly improved both my communication and writing skills. Based on peer reviews and the instructor’s feedback, I had a tendency to write long chunks of text in the beginning of the term which were very hard to follow. My writing became significantly more concise as the term progressed, which greatly improved my overall writing skills and ability to communicate points in a clear manner.

My most noticeable weakness in the assignments, however, as mentioned in peer reviews, was the frequent typos, grammar errors and missing words in my writing. Proofreading for these errors is very crucial as spelling and grammar free documents show professionalism which employers require. I normally spend a significant amount of time on the content of my writing and forget to proofread my work. In the future, I plan to make proofreading a priority as the hard work on content may go to waste with poor grammar and spelling.

My most noticeable strength in the assignments, as mentioned in the peer reviews, was the ability to properly organize and structure my writing documents. For each assignment, I follow the textbook very carefully while paying attention to detail to ensure my documents are easy for readers to follow. I believe organization skills are very important for most professional careers as time will be properly managed and tasks will be done efficiently.

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The process of creating a Web Folio was significantly more challenging and time consuming than I had originally expected. However, the experience was very rewarding and enjoyable as I now have a platform where I can showcase my skills and abilities. I decided to use my ENGL 301 UBC Blogs site to build my Web Folio as I already had a suitable amount of content to start with.

The most challenging part in creating my Web Folio was finding appropriate content to include such as images and hyperlinks as well as introducing and describing each section of my Web Folio in a friendly and professional manner, such as the Application Package, Best Works, etc. A significant amount of time was also spent on editing previous reflections and assignments to perfection, although the peer reviews and the instructor’s feedback were extremely helpful in the process.

This Web Folio is the first professional webpage I have created and I am very proud of my accomplishment. I plan to use my Web Folio in the future when seeking employment and I hope that employers and recruiters feel welcomed and invited while exploring my profile.

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Research Process for Formal Report
This process was not as difficult as I had expected initially. Compared to research papers, in which searching for books in the library and articles on the web are very common forms of research, the research done for this formal report was a lot less time consuming a lot more enjoyable. My research primarily consisted of surveys, which I greatly enjoy composing. Figuring out the right questions was not very difficult as my report proposal laid out three important sections, reliance on transit, demand for more bus stops and nighttime safety at UBC and my questions focused primarily on these topics. Getting survey respondents was also a simple task as my friends who are UBC students assisted me in asking their friends to do my survey, allowing a much faster spread. The most difficult task in the research process was finding the right person in AMS Safewalk to speak with about campus safety at nighttime, as most of the associates were not aware about this topic.

Organizing Formal Report
The formal report outline, which was done earlier in a previous assignment, significantly made the task of organizing my formal report easier. On my formal report draft, I included the headings that I listed on the formal report outline allowing readers to easily find a specific section of interest. The most time consuming part of organization was determining which graphs, obtained from my survey, to use in which subheading of the data section. Throughout this process, I learned to always design the outline of the report first with specific headings and subheadings as knowing the research topics and the overall writing process becomes much more simple.

Writing Formal Report Draft 
Writing the formal report draft was certainly a time consuming process but not as difficult as I had expected before starting. The formal report proposal and the progress report done in previous assignments were very helpful in the writing of my introduction. My proposal had covered the Background, Statement of Problem and Scope of Inquiry sections of the introduction while the progress report outlined the purpose and significance of the report. Since data was still being collected at the time of writing my first draft, the data section of my draft was incomplete without the full set of graphs which I planned to include. Even though I had an idea of the results from the survey, writing the conclusion was the most difficult due to not having the full set of illustrations to refer to. I learned that writing a report should be done in a step by step manner focusing on a few sections per day rather than writing the entire report in one day. Writing a few sections a day allows full focus and dedication into those sections resulting in stronger arguments and supporting details.

Peer Review Process
While reading Yingying’s report, I noticed that she had her full set of illustrations included in her draft and as a result, she wrote a very strong conclusion in her report. I realized the importance of having a complete data section with multiple graphs and images to refer to in the conclusion. There were also several sections in her report where she had used bullet points rather than paragraphs to state her points and I learned that my writing can be a lot more concise as I work on my final draft. The overall process was more time consuming compared to other peer reviews done for previous assignments due to reading a longer document, however, the checklist provided made the process significantly less time consuming than I had expected.

301 Pedraum Safarzadeh Formal Report Draft

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Creating a LinkedIn Profile 
Creating a LinkedIn Profile was a new experience for me as I never had a LinkedIn Profile before this assignment. Although I was new to LinkedIn, I found the process of creating a profile quite simple. Yingying’s memo regrading the ten best LinkedIn practices was extremely helpful as I was easily able to discover the keys to building a high quality profile. As pointed out by Kevin in the peer review of my profile, I can certainly further build my profile by earning endorsements for my skills and also improving my summary by stating my goals and interests. I also noticed through research that the skills and summary sections are ones that employers read the most so Kevin’s suggestions were very beneficial and helpful in perfecting my profile to increase the chances of landing a job in the near future.

Formal Report Proposal Preparation 
Choosing a topic for my formal report was certainly a challenge since I lack work experience and extracurricular activities and was limited to my experiences in the UBC community. There were not many problems in the UBC community that I have experienced and I only had a few report topic candidates. For every candidate, the process of figuring out whether the topic was investigable through surveys and interviews was very time consuming but I eventually chose a topic where I felt needs to be addressed in the UBC community which is to implement more bus stops on campus.

The report outline and progress report were very helpful in figuring out how my investigation is going to come together into a report. The outline allowed me to plan how to organize my report and through the progress report, I was able to plan my research and set incremental deadlines so that my report can be written as efficiently as possible without rushing on the last day. Currently, I have composed a survey which I am distributing to the UBC community throughout the week and I will be analyzing my data at the end of the week. As suggested by Polly, I am also planning to speak with AMS Safewalk to learn more about safety on campus, which is the main problem in my investigation. I will use charts and graphs based on the data I collect from the surveys and the information obtained by AMS Safewalk as ways to back up the arguments I make in my formal report.

Peer Review Process 
I had the pleasure to review Polly’s formal report proposal and through my first read I realized the professionalism in the tone of her writing, the use complex vocabulary and an overall grammar free document. Several read throughs were required in order to find any potential improvements in her work. At the end, I was only able to spot minor areas of improvement like avoiding the overuse of commas in long sentences and instead to break up those long sentences into multiple short sentences. Through reviewing Polly’s proposal, I was able to learn how to incorporate complex vocabulary into my own writing and how word choice makes a tremendous difference in the tone and reading flow of the writing. The peer review process for the report proposal was an overall great experience as now I am able to better articulate my arguments in my formal report using more complex vocabulary and sentences with better reading flow.

301 Pedraum Safarzadeh Formal Report Proposal Revised

Peer Review for Report Proposal

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Original Writing:
The definition assignment was a major piece of work in Unit 1 and I chose to define the term, Boolean algebra, to first year Computer Science students with high school mathematical knowledge. I felt like this term is complex but very important for first year Computer Science students to master and is a concept that can greatly be applied in advanced Computer Science courses and future technology related careers. Originally, I had some trouble distinguishing the difference between parenthetical and sentence definitions and interpreted a parenthetical definition to be only describing the use of the term in the real world. Therefore, I ended up writing, what I felt to be, an incomplete parenthetical definition or basically two sentence definitions. I throughly enjoyed writing the expanded definition for Boolean algebra because I was able to learn some interesting facts, which I had no previous knowledge of, such as the etymology and history of the term through research. I also greatly improved my teaching skills and communication in writing by paying special attention to the clarity of my writing and avoiding the use of jargon. To avoid the use of jargon, I envisioned myself as a recent high school graduate and tried to not think of concepts from Computer Science courses I took at UBC.

Peer Review Process:
I found the peer review process to be an excellent learning experience. I had the pleasure to review Kevin Huang’s writing and quickly realized how similar our approach to writing the expanded definition was. He discussed the etymology, history and how Gel Electrophoresis works like myself and he also discussed the components and applications of Gel Electrophoresis, which I did not discuss but found to be extremely helpful in learning about Gel Electrophoresis. His explanations were very organized and detailed that I was able to quickly understand the process of Gel Electrophoresis even though I have no background in biology and never took a biology class since high school science. The visuals he used were also extremely helpful and were explained in a lot more detail than the visuals in my own work. Reviewing Kevin’s work taught me that having small paragraphs split into many different sections is a much better approach to writing than having one or two long paragraphs of information. This approach is a lot easier for readers to find exactly what they want to know about the defined term and not have to reread to understand certain points of the definition.

Editing Process:
My peer reviewer, Kevin Huang, gave me some excellent and detailed constructive criticism on my writing which allowed me to easily spot and fix my errors in a short amount of time. Firstly, Kevin respectfully pointed me in the right direction of writing a parenthetical definition, which I had trouble with in my original writing. Kevin’s review also made me realize my tendency of writing run on sentences, for example, “Mathematical algebra and Boolean Algebra both have variables and are connected by some operator to make an expression but they have different rules in terms of the domain of the values assigned to variables and the different behaviours of the connecting operators in the expressions.” With his feedback I paid special attention to run on sentences when editing my writing and wrote shorter sentences while still getting all my points across to the reader. Thanks to Kevin’s review, I also realized that in my original writing, I was very focused on defining Boolean algebra that I had forgot to discuss the purpose of the definition. 

Overall, this assignment was very enjoyable as I was able to discuss a technical term in my own field to others through my writing and not only improve my writing but research and learn more about a term in which I already have prior knowledge of. Looking at another persons writing also allowed me to realize my strengths and weaknesses in my writing and incorporate different ideas into my own writing while revising. Below, I have attached my revised definition of Boolean algebra and also Kevin’s review of my definition.

301 Pedraum Safarzadeh Definition Assignment

Review of Definition Assignment from Kevin Huang