This course “Writing for Engineering” has been the most challenging writing course that I have taken in my student career. I have been assigned to write papers that I was not used to writing in the past. Words such as a lab report analysis or a technical description were new terms that I haven’t even heard of before taking this class. I was more commonly used to writing argumentative or informative essays since that was what most of my high school classes required. However, working on new types of writing such as the ones mentioned, have improved my skills and understanding of writing, and have helped me develop into a better writer and reader simultaneously. There were a set of goals that I needed to meet regarding this course, in which besides passing the class, included the opportunity to strengthen my value as a writer and improve my collaborative writing skills in order to be able to acknowledge my peer’s work and give reasonable feedback. Whether I met these course learning objectives is subjective, but I personally believed that I did to an extent where I can proudly say that I am a better writer than what I was six months ago and above all I enjoyed it more than I did before. 

The first challenging assignment that I had to do for this course was the Lab Report Analysis where I was required to compare the structural writing of two lab reports. I didn’t necessarily need to compare the content of both lab reports, but instead the manner that the authors structured the report in order to convey the main points. This took me the longest to finish out of all the assignments this semester since it was the beginning of the course and I was still quite new to these types of writing. The first thing that I learned was the APA formatting. I was always used to formatting my papers in MLA and did not hear about APA style until this moment. I had to look at some videos and get used to the sourcing and in text citations. The website “citationmachine” came in handy when it came to citing the references and will be something that I will always use from now on. Navigating the CUNY library database was some of the first things that I learned in this course. In order to find the lab reports to compare, I needed to get them from the online databases and it was not something that I used before. Analyzing the lab reports taught me the structure that all lab reports follow which are: Title, Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, and References. When planning how to complete the analysis I believed it was best to compare each section of both lab reports separately instead of comparing the whole reports at the end. This caused me to spend too much time worrying about each section and paragraph that I wrote since I wanted to make it perfect. This did not make me realize that the drafting stage was necessary since instead of making one small section perfect and wasting time, I could have made a draft of the entire paper in order to then keep building and perfecting it as a whole. This also caused me to not take criticism as I should have from my peers in class, since I believed that due to my hard work spent on a specific section it shouldn’t have a need for change. However, after editing peer’s work and suggesting changes in their writing, I realized that everyone’s draft did not need to be perfect and it was necessary to take criticism in order to improve. That led me to listen more attentively to the suggestions of my peers and I noticed the pattern of repetition in my lab report analysis. This helped me find new terms to include in my paper and change the flow of repetition for the final draft and the future writing assignments. After completing my lab report analysis I enhanced my drafting and editing skills for the next assignments and helped me develop as a writer overall. 

The Technical Description was the next assignment that I had to complete in the course. Coming up with a technical device to do a description on was not simple but after many ideas I finally settled with the Apple Watch. I did not own an apple watch so I needed to research the breakdown of the device and that part was lengthy. Unlike the lab report analysis, this time I made a complete draft of the technical description instead of focusing too hard on perfecting the section of an individual part. This helped me finish the assignment faster and have more time to take suggestions on what needed further improvement. I had a hard time implementing the images on the paper and citing them, but this was useful to teach me about alignment and structure for my writing. For example, putting images right next to the paragraph where the image connects to the topic discussed or putting it right under is ideal to give the reader that connection between both sources. Putting the image a page after the matter was discussed would not make it professional or ideal for the reader. The classes where we gave each other feedback were of tremendous help to develop and improve my writing skills, since having a different point of view is always better. I did not take criticism as well at the beginning of the course but at the time of this assignment I learned to listen more carefully and agree with most of what my peers were suggesting since they were just trying to help. Being more open minded is also an important skill that a writer must have in order to grow their writing abilities and skills. 

The Engineering Proposal was the first and only group project that we had to do in this course. The assignment was to come up with an invention that did not exist and make a video presentation about it along with an essay. This was the most fun assignment to complete due to the fact that we needed to work on it as a group. Luckily I had great team members in my group and we were able to have great communication throughout the process of the proposal. It took us a couple days and brainstorming during class time to come up with the “Utopie Smachtt Mirror”. That was probably the hardest part of the whole assignment since the rest just came with the flow. Working on collaborative writing seemed like a challenge at first because everyone is used to writing in their own style at their own pace and agreeing on a specific way to write our essay did not seem like an easy task. However, our group came to an understanding quite fast and we all divided equal parts of the assignment in order to then edit it together at the end to make it sound professional. At the end of writing our parts it was a surprise that our essay in fact did not need much change since it seemed like we all followed a certain style and rhythm even though we did not write it together in the moment. Due to long distance and having a spring break, we needed to work remotely and couldn’t meet up in person to discuss the project. This led to each of us recording our voice separately for the youtube video and then one of the group members editing it all together. This was a fun experience and I believe that working as a team was beneficial for all as we had each other’s back regarding some sections of the essay and presentation. I was responsible for doing the first two sections of the paper and presentation and the rest of the group was responsible for the rest. However, we all gave feedback on each other’s section and everyone took the suggestions and criticism in a good way to improve the project. For example, when it came to the slide presentation, some were in favor of adding a lot of text to the slides to put a lot of the information from the essay. However, I gave the suggestion to instead add more images to the slides and reduce the amount of text since it did not give it a good look. Everyone agreed that it was the best for the project and did not have any problem changing the structure of the slides. After the completion of this project I developed better collaborative writing skills since this was the first time where I was assigned a project of that aspect. I learned that communication was crucial for a group to work on a project together and make it a great end product. This would be important for me in my future as my goal is to enter the engineering field and I will be asked to work with other people on big projects for my career. 

Writing as a term can be defined as any conventional system of marking words, signs or numbers that represent the utterances of a language. However, writing is more than that, writing represents everything. The ability to speak to someone from generation to generation without the need to be present is a unique thing that writing allows us to accomplish. Things like books are years of life experiences and stories from authors put into small pages where people are able to read and take all the knowledge. We also live by a set of rules in society that were written by the fathers of the Constitution as well as have our rights thanks to the bill of rights written in the 18th century. Everything at the end can be traced back to the art of writing and will continue to stay that way since there is nothing that can replace it.