4134 West 16th Ave
Vancouver, BC V6R3E4
September 16th, 2019
ENGL 301 Technical Writing Class
University of British Columbia
2329 West Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4
Dear ENGL 301 colleagues,
My name is Yury, and I am appealing for your consideration of accepting me into your writing team. Currently I am enrolled in my final year of my Bachelor in Statistics, pursuing a career as a Data Science specialist. As part of my academic and professional journey, writing has played a crucial role in communicating my projects and ideas with my peers. I always placed utmost importance in the way I present my work to the public, due to its effect on my image and reputation. For the following reasons, I am confident my skillset and experience will allow me to be a great contributor to your team!
There are several things which set me apart as a candidate for your team, which I believe will ensure our team’s success, should you accept my application. Firstly, I believe that my technical background in statistics, computer science, and mathematics, although not usually associated with excellent communication, will be a perfect fit for the technical communication our team will perform. Furthermore, I greatly value my friendships and connections, which is why I have devoted a lot of time to improve my oral communication skills, to better understand my peers’ motivations, to gain wisdom from others, and to be able to reach out if I sense that someone could use a hand. I use the same strategies in my writing, in order to convey my thoughts in a thoughtful way; taking into account how my audience will perceive them. Finally, as a silly but relevant example, the vast volume of online messages I sent and received is perhaps the best testimony of my dedication and commitment to writing. For the past six years I have maintained a long distance relationship, with hundreds of messages exchanged on a daily basis. With this non-traditional skillset, I strongly believe I will be a great contributor and creative influence in your writing team.
As I have previously mentioned, technical writing is not only a skill I place particular importance on, but also a skill I wish to continually develop, both within the framework of this course and outside of it. As part of my work, I have gained a particular interest in the way living and nonliving things represent knowledge. Every individual person has a unique worldview, a unique perception, and different representations of what may seem to be the same concept. However, since humans don’t yet have a direct way to transfer our knowledge, wisdom, and perception to the brains of others, we must go through one of several limited communication channels in order to influence action, obtain information, and to share our ideas. Since my writing has the potential to reach a wide audience, I place a lot of emphasis on the development of my writing skills, which I believe aligns well with the goals of your group.
Finally, knowing two languages and learning a third, is an advantage I believe will bring unique perspectives to your team! Although English was my second language after Russian, for the majority of my life it has been my dominant one. I believe this has granted me an advantage in my learning and self-expression, with two perspectives on common concepts, and ideas stemming from two different sources of linguistic representation allowing me to say things in twice as many ways. Furthermore, 6 years now I have been learning German, achieving a B-2 level, which has forced me to confront the intricacies of not just the German language, but all of the ones I know. I have started paying particular attention to grammar elements, choice of tone, and the way sentences are composed to express ideas. Although the German courses were, of course, in German, they served as a tremendous asset in improving my communication. For these reasons and the ones above, I believe I will be a strong contributor to your team, and I would appreciate your consideration of my candidacy.
Thank you for taking the time to read and consider my application. If you think we would make a good team, please contact me at my private email address, yuryivz@hotmail.com. I look forward to hearing from you, and hopefully working with you!
Best Regards,
Yury Zhuk