September 14th, 2016
English 301 Technical Writing
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC
Dear Classmates,
Please consider my application to be a member of your writing team. I am in the 4th year of my Physics major at UBC and have gained firsthand experience writing formal documents as well as working in teams.
The courses that interest me the most are those that allow me to directly experience physical phenomena. Such courses are Experimental Physics, Computational Physics, and my Electronics laboratory. In these courses, I performed various experiments followed by detailed reports on my findings. For example, for my Electronics laboratory final I constructed an electric guitar tuner. I documented each step of the building process and then handed in a journal-style article on the function of my device. The academic achievement I am most proud of is having secured a co-op position at Vision Critical, a successful Canadian software company. Here I gained real world experience working with teammates to achieve our goals. I also became skillful in both verbally communicating and instant messaging with my group.
I have been a member of the Undergraduate Physics Society (Physsoc) since 2013. My first role in this club was the Lecture Series Coordinator. I was responsible for contacting professionals in my field and inviting them to give lectures on their research. This task made me proficient in authoring formal correspondence. Furthermore, I am currently Physsoc’s Mentorship Coordinator. In this position, I manage the recruitment of 3rd and 4th year Physics majors who would like to become mentors to incoming 2nd year students. To handle the enlistment of mentors and mentees, I wrote emails distributed to all Physics students. Thus, I am also practiced in peer-to-peer written communication.
My most important strength as a writer is my ability to easily transfer my ideas into written form. Additionally, I always self edit my work by reading it out loud multiple times. This helps me guarantee my ideas are understood clearly. That being said, English is not my mother tongue. I some times have difficulties with punctuation, as word-processing software does not always catch issues of this sort. Consequently, this may hinder–but never impede–my editing skills. My learning philosophy is that you must apply new concepts and skills in order to truly comprehend them. This is an effective learning method used in the sciences and I have integrated this into my learning style.
Thank you for reading through my application. I look forward to hearing from you to create a writing team. I may be reached via email at snavarroleiva@gmail.com or you can find me in the ENGL 301 Facebook group as Samuel Navarro.
Sincerely,
Samuel Andrés Navarro Leiva
Here is my Application letter in Word Doc. form: 301-samuel-navarro-application-letter