Writing for the Future: Reflective Essay on Writing for Engineers

Knowing myself, I’ve never been great at writing. I expected myself to struggle with following along and keeping up with the course. I had believed that writing was unnecessary in my future career and that I would be done with writing essays once I was out in the world. I was wrong. The assignments and lectures taught and reinforced skills that I would need in the future. I’m glad I had the opportunity to explore different forms of writing. Each assignment taught an invaluable lesson that will stick with me throughout my academic and future career.

Our first assignment in the course was creating a resume and cover letter, which I focused on engaging with myself and the audience. We had to locate internships that we found interesting. Since I wasn’t sure about my major, this was tough. When allowed to practice locating internships, I began to question myself, my interests, and my skill set. When going through internet job sites, I came across a listing for the Central Park Zoo as an animal behavior research intern. It caught my eye. Even though it wasn’t engineering, I felt a connection. During the mock application, I was allowed to engage with myself and think about why I wanted the internship and why I was a good fit. It made me examine my strengths and weaknesses. The resume and cover letter had to convince the audience, the potential employer, that I was fit for the job quickly and concisely. We also made an elevator pitch to introduce ourselves, which could be used for interviews or job fairs.

Following the resume and cover letter assignment, we had to write a lab report. Although I already had prior experience writing lab reports, changing the subject from science to probability and statistics was intriguing and made researching and writing a welcomed challenge. I am glad we went over two-part titles before doing the lab report. In the past, I wrote my titles in a less creative and often extremely straightforward manner. Experimenting, researching, and recording data wasn’t too different from what I’d done before. This assignment felt a lot simpler than many of my past lab reports.

The next assignment was the group proposal writing. In my opinion, writing a group proposal for a student center was the most difficult assignment. Each member of the group had a major role to play in completing the assignment as a lot of research was needed. It was hard to find time for our group to meet. Our schedules often didn’t overlap outside of class. We also each had different ways of writing, which may have led to the essay feeling inconsistent. Likewise in the beginning each member of the group had a different idea of how the student center should look so communication was important to make sure we were on the same page. Although difficult, I’m proud of our group for completing the assignment and presenting successfully. 

Our final assignment in the course was the technical description. I thoroughly enjoyed working on the assignment as it allowed me to do research on topics that I found interesting. I did my project on gynandromorphs, organisms with a mix of male and female characteristics, because of my interest in biology. While presenting, I felt I rushed through the poster due to time constraints. I also understood my poster felt a bit disorganized and messy. I realized my mistake when putting the poster together with tape that some of the text was slightly cropped and going over the feedback given, the bold text may have been too abundant which may have been confusing. In general, I’m proud of how the assignment came out and I’m glad I was able to share a topic that was able to keep the attention of my classmates. Most importantly, listening to the other presentations in class was enjoyable. A lot of the topics went over information that I would never think to look into otherwise.

The coursework we went through this semester helped me work on my punctuation, choice of words, and ways of writing. Although not perfect, progress was still made. Prior to this class, I had experience with the use of technology, from Blackboard, Excel, PowerPoint, etc, and information literacy, in using CCNY’s online libraries and databases, from prior classes. This is the same with reading and synthesis, doing research, reading a textbook, combining information from a variety of sources, etc, is something I had prior experience with. But despite that, gaining more practice is always helpful and builds upon these preexisting skills. Citation in APA was new to me as many of my other assignments used MLA. Drafting and collaborating with group writings and projects wasn’t a skill I was confident in despite having prior experience with doing similar projects. Revising the work of my group members is difficult because of the difference in our writing styles. Communication was needed to make sure we understood each other’s writings before being able to make modifications. I’m also glad we went over audience and purpose, it was a nice refresher on questioning why you are writing and for whom. This allows you to write in a way that will appeal to the reader and make It easier to understand.

In summary, despite not entirely being sure about a future in engineering, writing will always be important. I was wrong to assume that I wouldn’t need to write as much, writing is important across all career paths used for communication, and its versatility is used in a variety of environments. Writing for Engineers as a course taught skills in reading, research, critical thinking, and writing, preparing me for future academics and careers. Despite not being confident in my abilities, the course still helped equip me to read, write, and speak more thoughtfully and critically in a variety of professional environments, helping me practice engaging with the audience and writing. No matter the type of writing we do in the world, we should always make it easier for the reader because everything is connected.