Week 1 – Email Memorandum

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MEMORANDUM

 

To: Dr. Erika Paterson: Instructor

From: Mike Powar, Student

Date:

Subject: Notice – Letter of Application for writing team member

 

I would like to inform you that I have posted my “Letter of Application” on my blog.

 

The Letter of Application for a team writing position covered the following:

  • My interest in the position
  • A focused summary of relevant skills and experience geared towards students who are also studying in a technical program similar to mine.
  • A brief discussion of my work habits, approach to writing and learning philosophy.

 

Please review my letter of application at a time of your convenience and if you have any feedback to provide it will be appreciated and incorporated into my writing afterwards.

 

Thank for your time.

 

Sincerely,

Mike Powar

mpowar@student.ubc.ca

301_mikePowar_memorandum

Week 1: Application Letter

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September 27, 2020

Prospective team members

English 301 Technical class – University of British Columbia

 

Subject: Professional writing team member position with your team

 

Dear Prospective Team Member:

 

After reading the blog posts of our fellow classmates, I have decided to apply to be a writer for your English 301 technical writing team.  I think I would be a great fit on a team of fellow writers who have an interest in a technical field of Computer Science in addition to time spent in the working world.

 

While working towards a Bachelor of Computer Science at UBC (BCS), I have always had an interest in high quality documentation and have tried to ensure the projects I work on reflect that work to the best of my ability.  I have worked on and continue to try to get better at breaking down complicated programming tasks and ideas into forms that are clear and easy to follow.  This is no easy task and anyone who has done this will know it as well.  I have also explored creative writing by writing scripts for podcasts and with the short story form.  I think the ability to write for technical tasks as well as creative ones is a skill set well-suited for this team and one I continue to work towards.

 

Previous coworkers and supervisors will confirm that writing is a task I enjoy as a solo endeavour and as a collaborative effort.  I work hard, but I don’t like to waste effort; as such planning is important to me.  My approach to work aligns with how I approach learning – that planning, and practice works best when constructive feedback is offered, and opportunities are provided to learn from previous work as well the ideas of those around us.

 

The varied nature of the types of jobs I have worked in the past means that I bring a great deal of ideas and knowledge from a wide range of fields that can be adopted for whatever challenge might be presented.  My time as a construction manager and youth group leader has taught me to know when to take the lead and when to step back to both learn from others and to make space for others to grow as well.

 

If your team determines that my writing and my previous work experience will be beneficial for your writing team, then I would gladly take part in an interview in the near future.

 

Sincerely,

 

Mike Powar

mpowar@student.ubc.ca

This is home

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Welcome this student blog by Mike Powar for his UBC course on technical writing titled English 301: Technical Writing.  That student, Mike Powar, is me, the writer writing this posting.  As I work my way through the course description, I will also get a sense of things such as the expected degree of formality posts such as this are to be written.

The intention of this course is for students from a variety of faculties at the University of British Columbia to learn about different ways of communicating in what are referred to as “business and professional contexts”.  The types of writing students will produce for these contexts will be “abstracts, proposals, applications, reports, correspondence and online communications” — such as “emails, texts, Web Folio (I am interested to learn about this, since I have never heard of a web folio before) and networking”.

This course is fully online.  For the most part, all UBC classes this term are online due to safety measures the university has put in place as part of its response to COVID-19.  This section of English 301 however, was always meant to be online and has been for several years.

The course is made up of four units:

  1. Principles and practices (business correspondence and the “principles of audience, tone, clarity, and presentation”)
  2. Report proposals & Terms with Audience in Mind
  3. Report outline / design & Job Application documents and tools
  4. Formal report writing & networking strategies

I expect this course to be helpful practice for the type of writing I will do after graduation from University.  I like the idea of a course intended to assist me with skills I believe I have lots of room to improve on and look forward to the opportunities to learn by practice. The part that I expect to be challenging is the online learning aspect of it.  The work from home situation has not been one I have thrived in thus far.  My favourite places to work from – on campus are no longer accessible and I have yet to find alternatives that come close to matching the things I look for in a place to work from.

To close, I will add that even this writing feels like a step in the right direction that I hope to extend until the completion of the course.