Self-Assessment

This has been quit the semester! Amongst all the pandemic craziness, education still goes on. Students and teachers alike had to adjust to taking classes online. I personally found distanced learning to be quite the challenge. There were so many things that would get me distracted so easily. But, taking this writing for engineering class enabled me to overcome some of my difficulties (in writing that is), and helped me find some problems that I must overcome, which I didn’t previously know I had.

                        Right off the bat this semester I learned to have to follow rigid structures and formats for different writings. These standards make it easier to write as you can now break down the material into different sections to write. In the technical description we had to write at the beginning, the draft I wrote didn’t really follow any structure at all. I later found out the format from the course site and the textbook, and hurriedly fixed it as best I could before the deadline.

             Something else I learned to do was actually drafting before I start writing anything. I know most people already do this, but I always used to feel like making drafts was a waste of time or just extra work. We were introduced to a few different methods of drafting, from which I found writing down main points to be the most helpful for me. The drafting process really does help with the flow when writing, and you can focus more on the delivery, or how well the information is presented, as well as on grammar and spelling.

            During our memo project we were put into teams of three to work on it. I didn’t think it would be too difficult as I had two other people helping me out, although in some respects it was like in research and compilation, however, communication turned out to be our biggest challenge. Our choice of communication app turned out to be a little difficult to use for one of my teammates as it was his first time using it. It was hard to keep everyone on the same page initially and decide our definite roles. Communicating clearly with a team is essential for collaborative projects and helps things go swimmingly.

            One of the things I noticed about my writing process that I still need to write on is being more decisive on a topic and how to approach. Throughout the semester on almost all the projects, I had to change, or slightly modify the topic I chose to write about. I need to more confident in my writing and in my ability to produce results on a given subject and changing to something later that I think would be better. If I am unsure about something or change my mind while writing about something, it will be difficult to convince readers about it.

            Another thing that I need to work on is planning and scheduling my writing. I often put off things like drafting because I get too sucked into research, and while actually starting the draft, I keep back tracking and re-checking the research. It wastes a lot of time and ties in with my lack of decisiveness. A combination of these two causes a lot of delays, and it doesn’t help that I had my job and other classes giving me less time to work on assignments. For most of the projects I barely made the deadlines for submitting. I needed to make a more efficient use of my time, and this is something I really need to work on in all aspect of my life really. I also have to better learn how to integrate and paraphrase my sources.

                        Throughout this semester, my outlook on writing changed a lot. Before I used to look at writing as more of just means to provide information to others. I pictured it as more of an information dump to get your point across to other parties. However, I now see it as more of a presentation as well as providing adequate information. Everything you write has a proper structure to follow and specific purpose. These structures or formats are kind of like a canvas for the things you write, providing the common standard for writers to put their creativity and ingenuity into.