Category Archives: Reflection

If we do not learn from our mistakes, we are bound to repeat them. 

Therefore, I believe that it is incredibly important to reflect after every assignment and/or unit. In my reflections, I explored the challenges I faced and more importantly the lessons I learned. I have tried to explore both writing specific challenges as well as more general challenges in terms of organization. And having the right mindset to finish certain assignments. I hope you enjoy reading my reflections and join me on this journey as I work to improve my writing in a professional context.

This first unit was an incredibly enjoyable introduction to the process we will be following for other assignments in the coming term. This first unit consisted of writing a letter, memo, definition, and peer-reviewing the definition of our teammate. My reflection will describe; my learning experience in writing definitions, peer-reviewing, and editing of my definition of A/B testing.

Writing the definition was a great lesson in writing precisely for the intended audience. However. knowing a lot more about A/B testing compared to my intended audience created two problems.

Firstly, when writing my sentence definition, I grappled with writing concisely and excluding jargon. Knowing the topic well had become a hindrance. Knowing the vastness of the A/B testing made it difficult to decide which aspects to omit in the sentence definition.

For example, at first, I had included a sentence about the statistical method used when comparing two samples in A/B testing. Since this is an important part of the testing process. Without it, to me, the definition felt incomplete and inaccurate.

However, with it, the sentence had now become a small paragraph, which seemed to defeat the purpose of a sentence definition. This is where having a specific audience and situation helped. I realized that likely the small business did not need to know nor would they be interested in the statistical approach used in A/B testing. 

Secondly, already knowing a lot about the topic can make it difficult to put oneself in the position of someone who knows little. With my expanded definition, I found it hard to know where to begin. Once again knowing how vast this topic was had become a hurdle, the curse of knowledge.

The framework given to us in the textbook was a huge lifesaver, helped narrow down the choices of aspects and gave direction from where to begin

Peer reviewing Mathew’s work was quite insightful since it helped me understand the mindset of a non-technical reader.

First, I simply read the definition, not thinking about giving feedback and without reading the framework. Paradoxically it seemed easiest to find areas for improvement and see what the writer did well when I was not actively looking for it.

After taking note of these things I read through the textbook and framework. Now I was better able to understand why certain techniques seemed effective. Once I was able to figure out the “Why”,  I was in a better position to give recommendations to improve.

In my second read-through, the framework really helped me look in places where I had not looked before, in my first read-through. For example, I hadn’t given the visual much thought but the framework helped me look at it more closely. It was then I realized that it wasn’t clear what the different stages in the cycle were. Peer review helped me to provide suggestions in a constructive and friendly tone.

The last step of this process was changing and improving my work based on the feedback I was given by my teammate. Keeping with the strategy I had with my previous components I first read through my own work with fresh eyes. Whilst reading, I took note of sentences that felt too long or did not sound right. After reading Mathew’s feedback I saw that we agreed on a few things, which helped me improve further. 

I agree with his assessment that my sentences often ran too long and felt choppy. He gave examples but I was able to find more now that I knew what I was looking for.  In addition, the similarity of my headings and subheadings jumped out to me too.

I also removed the etymology section since it did not add value to the reader. Although interesting I don’t think it helped further the understanding of A/B testing beyond what was given in the sentence definition. Secondly, I also noticed I had used conjunction a few times and this is not appropriate for a document that requires a formal tone   

The assignments are included below:

The second unit of English technical writing class focused heavily on writing technical documents which are both practical and useful for the industry. This unit consisted of writing a draft proposal, researching best practices for creating a LinkedIn Profile, creating a LinkedIn Profile, writing an outline for a Formal Report, and peer-reviewing a Linked-In Profile.

Up until this unit, I had passively read through a lot of articles on how to improve my LinkedIn Profile. However, the Memo assignment helped give me the motivation to finally summarize and synthesize my research. Finally culminating in me taking action on developing my profile instead of going into analysis-paralysis. Which often led me to procrastinate and put off improving my writing.

Writing a summary for a LinkedIn Profile gave me an excellent opportunity to self reflect. It helped me to work towards recognizing and appreciating the knowledge and skills which I have gained through my time at UBC. Furthermore, through my self-reflection, I came to realize that I need to have a greater depth, rather than breadth of experience.

Whilst working on my summary I found writing about computer science is challenging due to the variety of jargon that exists in the field. This is especially true when writing about my software engineering projects which often requires an understanding of technical terms and experience, to comprehend. However, through the course, I have learned how to pick out the skills I learned or demonstrated from each of my experiences, elaborating on them simplistically. Nonetheless, I still have to work on this task and with time develop a more complete profile.

Reading through Cody’s LinkedIn profile helped me improve my own. It helped see what he did that caught my eye or worked and then apply it to my profile, in my own words and thoughts of course. Sometimes his areas of improvement also provided insight into where I could better my profile

Writing a research proposal and outline helped me describe the various issues and concerns that could potentially occur with communication channels. This process helped me visualize the process that lay ahead. This gave me clarity about what I wanted to achieve with the formal report.

As with Cody’s LinkedIn profile, Mathew’s proposal was on a topic starkly different than my own. This once again lent me insights and unique perspectives on how I could improve my proposal.

I am worried about the effectiveness of my surveys due to cultural reasons. Although I have made it clear the surveys would be anonymous, I am not sure if people will be completely honest about the effectiveness of the communication systems. I have tried not to lead the participants on for ethical reasons but also to disarm them. If asked directly about the problems in their communication system, they would be less inclined to speak honestly.

In conclusion, Unit 2 was a productive writing experience and enhanced my writing skills. Thanks for reading my Unit 2 blog reflection. I am open to any suggestions and feedback.

Reflection

The third unit of English technical writing class was incredibly challenging but taught me a lot. In this class we focused on writing documents pitched to the reader of the document; writing with a “You” perspective. In addition, we used the “You” attitude for the following: wrote an email memo providing feedback to a student’s letter to staff, writing of business letters, formal report, and review of a formal report. 

Writing a critique on someone’s email message using the “You” attitude, was a real tightrope walk for me. Maintaining the harmony between giving honest feedback but not coming off as harsh was difficult. However, this experience definitely helped me grow and I believe it will be incredibly beneficial in the long run. 

In the realms of software engineering, individuals have varying expectations concerning; code quality, documentation of code, length of code, and efficiency of work. Due to this assignment, I am in a better position to provide other people with constructive and informative criticism.  

The Complaint Letter and a Bad News Letter with a “You” perspective, was meant to improve our skill in “delivering of bad news” while being considerate of the other person’s feelings and awareness of the necessity of not hurting  one’s pride.

It is very easy to get overwhelmed by a Big Task like this. I found myself often missing the forest for the woods.  However, this is where the outline exercise became a lifesaver, I learned that if I follow an outline I would not feel as lost. I tried to systematically pace myself which gave me plenty of time.

The statement of the problem allowed me to concisely state the issues that I aim to solve. Given that I stated the problem, in the beginning, my writing became much more focused and specific. This was a huge help since I have the tendency to go tangential to my objective.

After that, I looked at each communication channel; frequency of usage, efficiency in communication, and specific communication needs. I realized simply trying to enumerate the following things led to some epiphanies about patterns I hadn’t noticed. It also led me to ask questions about the data I had not thought of before. After enumerating the numbers I went back and counted efficiency scores based on the modal purpose we found.  Regardless, the biggest takeaway was once again seeing the big picture. Seeing all the facts together, allowed me to make more sensible recommendations and conclusions.

Soon enough, I reviewed Matthew’s report. Deriving from my experience, from the past two units, I first read his report passively and then noted down my observation before actively parsing through the report to identify areas of improvement. Doing so allowed me to understand the “YOU” perspective of my report. Since his report was written for the board of directors of Attack Volleyball this exercise required me to change gears from the usual review assignments we have done. I now had to think from their perspective.

First Draft Attached Below:

What was my approach  (emphasis)?

In this course, we learned about the “YOU” perspective. From the “YOU” perspective, one is expected to be empathetic to the audience as possible. Moreover, they ought to craft the letter according to the expectations of the audience. For instance, I made my page relatively simplistic, lacking fancy media, in order to not overwhelm a recruiter with too many animations or media, and to allow them to gain information about me easily. However, if I had more time for this assignment,  I would have preferred to create the site from scratch to show the recruiter my skills. My site would have included some animation and CSS. This would’ve shown to the recruiter my designing skills. I would’ve also liked to add some musings to my page, to share my opinions and research regarding Agile development, project management and technology. I really believe in working with the consumer for my projects. I also like experimenting with Extreme Programming to accelerate the pace of production. I could have also liked to discuss my adventures in project management and my use of the Pomodoro Technique and Time Trackers to enhance my productivity. 

Moreover, I would have liked to create my CMS system from scratch which allowed me to easily add works for this course. Perhaps, this is a task for another day. 

Enjoy

I enjoyed learning how to use WordPress. WordPress is an important skill to have in some web development and blog development projects. In addition, they are known to have excellent SEO and Google Ads. I’ve always wanted to learn to use WordPress and create an Affiliate Marketing blog, a blog for my musings and a website to showcase my projects. I’m glad that I had the opportunity to learn how to create a blog on WordPress. Hopefully, my ambitions for a blog would no longer be in limbo. Furthermore, I learnt how to design a blog with a consu

mer in mind. I also learnt that blogs are niche. So it is not appropriate for me to have one blog with all of my work, but rather multiple blogs, for my various type of works; projects, technology and musings. 

Challenging

I found it challenging to connect the posts with the web page. However, I couldn’t figure out how to set up the categories as we did for the submissions to the group. Therefore, I simply posted my assignments on various pages and had links referring to them throughout my reflections and the best works page. But, this is definitely something that I have to start to work on for my I also had to make the hard trade-off in spending time on the design or spending time adding content to the blog. Although, the design is important. If one spends too much time on the design, there is limited time spent on the actual content of the blog. This lesson will also apply as I start writing for my own blog and documentation. 

In addition, I installed the Gutenberg plugin to help me format my pages. When I start blogging professionally, I would perhaps need to install plugins and learn about them to help me achieve my tasks quicker.

Overall, this has been an intense and challenging journey, but it has also been a rewarding and informative one. I have grown as a writer and learned more about my weakness as a writer. I will now be able to know what to pay attention to in my writing when I am proofreading.

On this journey, the biggest strength I believe I have gained is being able to write in a more concise manner. The bullet point format of the peer review helped me with this. Since then bullets points meant to be concise. The biggest key I have learned to more concise writing is using precise language. This has meant I have had to expand my vocabulary which will help me in the long run.

More importantly, I have learned that although certain tricks and editing techniques help; concise writing is a state of mind. It involves a focus on statements of facts and adding value. I try to read my work from the perspective of my expected audience with the criterion; does this sentence add value to me? Reading a document from this perspective helps to stay concise. I have slowly started to write with this mindset instead of having to employ it in the editing process.

It will be important for me to carry this thought process with me into my working career. Working professionals do not have time to read long overexplained memos. As I said before I’ll have to stick to the facts and be precise in my language.

A weakness throughout this course has been my constant use of first pronouns such as “you” and “I”. This also contributed to my difficulties in my ability to write in a concise manner. However, I believe these are merely symptoms of a larger problem. That problem I believe is my inability to differentiate between writing and speaking to an audience. There Are many ways the two ideas overlap tremendously yet they also differ in many crucial ways. Since I focus too heavily on writing as though I am talking to them directly, I often make certain stylistic and grammatical mistakes. One of which is my constant use of first-person pronouns as well as writing run-on sentences.