The tasks I performed in Unit 2 helped me to improve my professional writing. One example of this is when I changed the topic of the Formal Report Draft we were assigned to create. I had originally had chosen a topic on the North American Women’s Debate Tournament hosted by the UBC Debate Society, which is a club I have been a part of for several years. However, after some reflection I realized that there were several problems with this topic. Firstly, as this distance education class is the final course of my degree, I am no longer involved with the Debate Society as much as I had been previously. Secondly, it was also not a report that was very relevant to my career path as a Software Developer. Instead of choosing to continue this report, I decided to contact my TA to try and change my topic to something better.

By doing so, I learned the value of writing professional emails while making sure to keep the reader in mind. This is because after my TA directed me to email the Professor, Dr. Paterson took several days to respond to my email. When she did it was to tell me to review the lesson objectives for writing professionally in the course readings, and to email her again with my survey questions and interview plans. Upon reflection, I realized that my previous email to her was much too similar to the emails Evan Crisp wrote to his Professor. I decided to re-read my writings on ‘Writing with a You Attitude’ and pretended that it is was actually address to me. Upon doing so, I was much more careful to consider the reader when responding to Dr. Paterson again. This time she responded very quickly with a helpful feedback on my survey as well as an encouraging message about my report. This series of events that occurred during my work in Unit 2, truly helped me to see the value of writing professionally.

I also enjoyed what I learned during our research and profile design of LinkedIn. While I had already set up a profile before this class, it was very helpful to get peer reviewed feedback on how I could improve. I received helpful advice from my partner, such as creating URL links to my personal coding projects, re-organizing my layout, and several grammar and spelling improvements.  I also enjoyed review my partner’s website and was able to use some of his ideas to improve my own profile as well. Because LinkedIn is becoming an increasingly vital part of business networking, the work we did in Unit 2 will certainly be beneficial to my career.

Finally, I very much enjoyed all of the peer review that we did. It was very helpful to hear recommendations of how to improve my formal report outline as well as my LinkedIn profile. By having to critique someone’s writing or profile, it makes you think of ways to improve your writings. For instance, by explaining to my partner that he needs to better organize his headers and subheaders in his formal report draft, I was able to improve the organization of my headers and layout as well. Improvements like these are a very helpful result of doing the peer reviewers.

Overall, the work I did in Unit 2 benefitted my professional writing skill as well my use of LinkedIn. The peer reviews, letters to my instructors and LinkedIn research all had valuable lessons for me to learn from. I look forward to the work I have left to do for Unit 3 and the life lessons I will hopefully also learn from it.

URL of Peer Review:

http://engl301.arts.ubc.ca/2017/02/10/peer-review-of-formal-report-proposal-for-rick-bryant/

The main thing I learned in Unit 3 was to think critically about problems I may encounter during my career. In writing my formal report draft, I had to analyze data in order to come up with the best solution to my problem. It was somewhat difficult to come up with these solutions as there are many strategies that one can implement in finding their first job in the tech industry (which is the subject of my report). Of the many people I surveyed and interviewed, almost all of them had different strategies that they thought were best. I had to analyze and interpret my findings in order to find common themes among the responses. I also had to critically analyze which strategies would be effective for my problem statement. For example, the majority of people believed that work experience was the most important factor in getting a job in the tech industry. However, since my report was on getting your first job in the tech industry, focusing on work experience is not a strategy one could employ. Instead, I had to find the majority of responses that would be applicable to my problem statement. As a result, I was able to conclude that focusing on building personal projects that improve your resume and coding skills was the best strategy for finding one’s first tech job.

I also developed my experience of thinking critically about problems during my peer review of my partner’s formal report. I found that while his report had excellence data on how to improve coding education to children school, he did not have a very strong proposed solutions. His main solution to improve coding education was to vote for the NDP in the upcoming provincial election. However, I suggested to him that this was not a very good solution as his main audience was “educators” rather than the general population of BC. I also gave suggestions to alternative solutions that might be more applicable to the data he collected. For example, in the body of his report he had included an image of the relative money spent on coding education between provinces, and pointed out that BC was one of the lowest. I suggested to him that he could use this data to give a specific solution to the problem such as “British Columbia should increase spending on coding education by X amount of dollars.” This example shows how the peer review, along with my other work on the formal report draft in Unit 3, helped me to learn about how to think critically about problems and research data in order to find effective solutions to the problems I will encounter during my career. As such, Unit 3 taught me about some important skills and I look forward to what I will be learning in Unit 4.

Reflection Blog

The writing process was very helpful. As I am currently creating a presentation of the Universal Turing Machine, it was very helpful to have to make sure to explain the definition as clearly as possible. My having to go through and make sure that each section was clearly explained I vastly improved the coherence and organization of my explanation. Having to create visuals to help explain my definition also forced me to make sure that the illustrations clearly explained the topic.

The peer review was also very helpful as he was able to point out some places that were unclear and needed better explanation. I was able to revise my definitions and some mistakes to improve my explanation of the topic. He also pointed out that I missed including my references which I was able to fix in my revisions.

Perhaps the thing that I should have improved on my most is making more clear why I choose this term. As this definition is a part of an explanation of the Universal Quantum Computer, and the real meaning of the Universal Turing Machine isn’t fully seen until understanding that topic, my review seemed somewhat confused as to why I had chosen the topic or what the importance was. I should have been more clear at the beginning as to what my intention was.  

Definitions Word Doc: UniversalTuringMachine

Peer View Link: http://engl301.arts.ubc.ca/2017/02/03/13-peer-review-review-for-travis-gritter/

From: Travis Gritter (travis.gritter@gmail.com)

To: Rick Bryant (Rickbryant.ls@Outlook.com)

Subject: Acceptance of Invitation to Prospective Writing Team

Date: Sun., Jan. 23, 2017 3:00pm

To Rick Bryant

Thank-you for your invitation to your professional writing team. As you have an interest in Real Estate development which contains a great deal of communication, I believe your interests will work within our team. I also appreciate the experience you have developed in your writing skill throughout University, and I believe that this will greatly benefit the team projects we will be doing. 

I have attached a copy of my application letter which contains relevant details about my work history and learning philosophy.

If you have any questions or concerns please do not hesitate to contact me. I look forward to working with you this semester.

Sincerely

Travis Gritter

From: Travis Gritter (travis.gritter@gmail.com)

To: Eric Hsu (enw.hsu@gmail.com)

Subject: Accept of Invitation to Prospective Writing Team

Date: Sun., Jan. 23, 2017 3:00pm

To Eric Hsu

Thank-you for your invitation to your professional writing team. As you are taking a Computer Science degree , I believe that we share a common interest in technology that would make us excellent team members. I also appreciate your background in research with I believe will help our group immensely during the team projects we will be doing.  

I have attached a copy of my application letter which contains relevant details about my work history and learning philosophy.

If you have any questions or concerns please do not hesitate to contact me. I look forward to working with you this semester.

Sincerely

Travis Gritter

From: Travis Gritter (travis.gritter@gmail.com)

To: Josh MacDonald (josh.a.macdonald@gmail.com)

Subject: Accept of Invitation to Prospective Writing Team

Date: Sun., Jan. 23, 2017 3:00pm

To Josh MacDonald

Thank-you for your invitation to your professional writing team. As you are also enrolled in the B.C.S. program, I believe that we share a common interest in technology that would make us excellent team members. I also appreciate your “learns by doing” philosophy as I believe this will help our group immensely during the projects we will be doing.  

I have attached a copy of my application letter which contains relevant details about my work history and learning philosophy.

If you have any questions or concerns please do not hesitate to contact me. I look forward to working with you this semester.

Sincerely

Travis Gritter

From: Travis Gritter (travis.gritter@gmail.com)

To: Erika Paterson

Subject: Email Memo

Date: Jan. 18th, 2017

I am writing to inform you that I have posted my Letter of Application to my blog page. I have attached it as a word doc as you requested, and have also attached it to this email memo. A summary of my letter of application is as follows:

• My career interest in computer science, and my extra-curricular activities in the debate society
• The strengths and weaknesses of my writing style
• My learning philosophy of discussion with others

You can find a copy of my letter of application attached below. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to let me know.

Sincerely

Travis Gritter

301TravisGritterApplicationletter

2826 Guelph Street

Vancouver, BC  V5T 3P8

January 18th, 2017

travis.gritter@gmail.com

ENGL 301, Department of English                                          

 University of British Columbia                                                                                                                   

397 – 1873 East Mall 

Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1

To Class of English 301

I am a Bachelor of Computer Science student in his final semester of university. My previous degree was in Philosophy where I developed a passion for logic philosophy as well as the theory of computing. I have a particular interest in topics such as Turing machines, complexity classes and quantum computing. I also have an interest in how developments in technology, like artificial intelligence and virtual reality, affects society. I would love to form a team with members who are also interesting in writing about technology. While I do not yet have any technical work experience, I have been attending several hackathons and tech events since I’ve started my degree. My most notable one was the Global Game Jam where I made a boss fighting video game with the Unity Engine. I’ve gone on to make several of my own video games using Unity including Golf Course Manager VR which I based off my summer job as a Groundskeeper. I also have been an active member of the UBC debate team for the past few years, having competed and volunteered at many competitive debate tournaments throughout North America. In this club I learned valuable communication skills which I hope can contribute to the team projects we will be doing this term.      

My strengths in terms of writing skill is my critical thinking and my organization skills. I feel that my background in philosophy and debate has given me experience to determine what is important to explain and how to communicate it clearly. I am also excellent at generating intriguing ideas for projects and how best to implement them. I also work very well within a team environment. My weakness in terms of writing style is undoubtedly my attention to detail. I find that essays are often full of small grammar and spelling mistakes that I fail to catch. Even when I really do spend the time to try and find them all I always seem to miss some small details. As such, I would love to be on a team with someone who is a very good editor.  

My learning philosophy is to always discuss what you learnt with other people. I find that when I share what I have been learning with others and have to respond to any questions or criticisms they may have, I find that I always strengthen my understanding of a topic. I find that this is also the best way to identify weaknesses in my thinking that I should change or find better evidence for. In the debate society for instance, I find debating about a subject forces you think deeply about an issue and gain a much better understanding of it. Even though this is an online course, I feel there is still a great opportunity to discuss our ideas with each other in this class by using the many methods of online communication that are available to us.

In summary, I am someone who has excellent communication skills with a passion for technology. I am very much looking for a team that is also interested in doing a project on technology, so don’t hesitate to let me know if that’s also a topic that appeals to you.

Sincerely

Travis Gritter

301TravisGritterApplicationletter