This course was really difficult for me; I was not comfortable with writing in a formal tone, and the issues of my literary essays, like my struggle with developing and maintaining theses, were exacerbated without the decorative sentences usually found in literary analysis. I doubted myself at the start of the semester but truthfully, I’m surprised at my growth. Feedback from my peers and the professor has made me infinitely more confident in my skills. The process of writing this introductory essay revealed how these efficiencies, are now habitual. My assessment of the Introductory Letter assignment, the Product Review assignment, the Lab Report Analysis assignment, the Technical Description assignment, the Technical Description assignment, the Memo assignments, the Collaborative Project assignment, and the Leadership presentation have shown me how to write in a concise formal tone while maintaining a solid argument. Along with these, my personal artifacts of an Earth Day Instagram post, a slideshow on the Palestinian Genocide, and a Freshman Composition Research Paper prepared me for the skills required in this class.

My Introductory Letter assignment strengthened my thesis development skills within the formal letter genre. Although I was familiar with argument development coming into this course, I had no experience with formal letter writing and thesis development was particularly difficult; I had never written about personal or professional goals in a formal context so I struggled to create an argument. I considered my goals before trying to convey them with proper language and structure. I began by breaking the large question of my professional future, into smaller questions like previous school and work experience. My larger thesis was formed by answering smaller questions, and it made my letter simpler to structure.

My Product Review assignment expanded my collaboration skills with peer editing. I had experience with peer editing before this course but it had always been an independent activity. The Product Review assignment required me to preface fellow students about my struggles with paragraph structure and their edits helped form an improved skeleton in my final paper. I asked my peers what they thought they were lacking and used the time we had to mark up my copy of their essays before having thorough conversations with my commentary. The communication throughout the peer editing session made editing and rewriting my final draft efficient and manageable.

My Lab Report Analysis assignment assisted my ability to articulate and maintain a stance throughout my essay. I struggle to maintain a consistent argument and sometimes am compelled to change it after writing the essay; because I usually don’t start with outlines, run-on sentences create confusing body paragraphs and stray from the original argument entirely. In this essay, I broke down my opinions for each journal, making sure each would strengthen my general consensus. These sentences would serve as guidelines for my paper. Because I knew my thesis early, I simply proved each part of my larger argument and tried to maintain a clear path within the paragraphs that led to my thesis. 

My Technical Description assignment improved my understanding of effective writing and of  tone. In previous classes, I used colloquial language often but beginning this course forced me into formality. Not only did I need a formal tone, but I had to weave in subtle persuasion within paragraphs of fact. I gained a fuller understanding of subtle persuasion and its significance in the essay by considering how consumers would react to my piece. I was cautious with my positive adjective use and, with a thesaurus, I eliminated unnecessary words. This helped my Technical Description fulfill the purpose of introducing staplers as an invention and hinting at why my stapler is a better choice.

My Memo assignments enhanced my ability to critique my own work. When submitting each paper, I generally ignore the comments made by professors, so analyzing my papers myself prevented mistakes to occur again. The Memos forced me to reread my papers again and notice structural and grammatical errors that I’d missed. This in turn taught me to edit my writing as I go along the drafting process, and find new ways to improve my work in other classes. It made me aware of where I am lacking before the errors were made.

My Collaborative Project assignment helped me integrate an outside source, the paper, into a presentation. I entered this class confident in my presentation skills but condensing a 12-page paper into a ten-minute presentation was daunting. My job was to concisely explain the problem our innovation was solving. The original introduction was about four paragraphs, and I had to avoid repetition while mentioning key points. I started by noting which arguments were continually repeated and how they were defended. The key argument was written on the slide, subpoints were summarized in photos and I elaborated on everything with my speech. This technique gave both visual and auditory ways for the audience to digest the information.

My Leadership presentation strengthened my proficiency in choosing sources. In my rhetorical situation presentation, I defined and explained each step in analyzing a piece of text. Definitions and examples were necessary to foster understanding. I thought I’d get by with Purdue Owl, but soon I began looking at university websites and speeches to find examples. This challenged me to find the right examples from sources that are not blogs and are fact-checked. I confirmed the validity of the website’s company, their peer review process, and listed sources, before citing them in my presentation. 

My Earth Day Instagram post taught me how to research from larger sources. This Instagram post was a work assignment. Before beginning this post, I avoided using larger articles in my sources. Most sources were either too detailed or too general however, this in-depth article had a perfect balance between details and summary; I used a general article to outline my timeline, along with the more thorough article that had dates, speech quotes, and further elaboration on the political impact of the holiday. The articles filled each other’s blind spots, so I had a fuller picture using them together.

My Palestinian Genocide slideshow reinforced my ability to engage in genre analysis and integrate larger amounts of history into a concise presentation. Unlike my Collaborative Project presentation, my Palestinian Genocide slideshow was created as lasting reference material, and not visual aid. The complexity of this genre and the age of my audience convinced me to create a thorough slideshow with an accessible speech. I began by separating the slides: definitions, chronological historical events, and the present day. Because the audience could follow along with the slides, I focused on summarizing the information given. Each historical event was spoken about in cause-and-effect phrases so the audience could digest our speech and go back to the slides as a reference for questions. 

My Freshman Composition Research Paper expanded my ability to cite my sources. In this research paper, I analyzed two journals that explored the effects of self-sexualization in children. This was my first research article where I choose my own sources, and I wanted to pick the right information to paraphrase into my analysis. My first paragraphs introduced the issue, so I began by grouping similar statistics from each journal together. To confirm my citations were correct, I wrote down the in-text citation for each journal and simply pasted them in when needed. I also noted the formatting of in-text citations as a precaution. This essay assignment reinforced a meticulous habit of source checking, especially because along with the journals, I had additional sources.

I wouldn’t consider this a fun class; there is a multitude of large assignments and readings that, though usually concise, are on writing as a skill. I didn’t know, before beginning this class, what it meant to write like an engineer. But with all these assignments, I’m a lot more confident in doing so. I know these skills will be useful in the future.