Abstract: This essay summarizes my experience writing all the assignments this semester. I describe how I achieved each learning objective and what I learned while writing each piece. In the end, I give my own definition of what writing means to me.

When I registered for Engl 21007, I had no hopes of learning anything in the class. I thought that I would just write essays answering different prompts just like my English classes in the past. Within the first week of attending the class, I was proved wrong. I was given a list of assignments that I will be doing that will prepare me for my career in engineering. I was only used to writing literature analysis and I am so glad this class took me out of my comfort zone and helped me gain skills that I can use in my future.

The first assignment was the Technical Description. I had to choose an object and write a description about its mechanism and I chose the graphing calculator.  I used the Internet and the CCNY library to locate the appropriate sources for my description. The sources helped me gather information about the graphing calculator so that I can write a thoroughly researched assignment. I intended my classmates to be the audience of my essay. As engineering students, I know that all my classmates have used a graphing calculator and I wanted to provide more information on how it actually functions. I acknowledged my and others’ range of linguistic differences and that is why instead of using complex language with mechanical jargon, I used simple language that all my peers will be able to understand. I also provided descriptions for complex terms such as “standard operator precedence” and “MathPrint” instead of assuming that the audience knows what they mean.

The second assignment I worked on was the Memo, which was a group project. I understood the importance of being able to engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes with this assignment. Together, we decided to write a letter to the Governor of New York about the city’s limited parking space. Each member had a different role in the crafting the piece and at the end we ended up with a complete letter. Outside this assignment, sharing my drafts and outlines on the discussion board allowed me to gain feedback from my work. Having someone with a different perspective look into my writing helped me better my work because I gained new insights on how to make my essay more appealing. They also helped me reduce my mistakes. I also learned how to be a better reviewer after receiving the evaluations on my essays. Not only did I learn how to critique kindly but also to not just offer any opinion but the ones that actually help their essays. 

The third assignment of the semester was the Lab Report. From personal experience, lab reports were my least favorite writing assignment in all my science classes but this time, I decided to make it a fun experience. I wrote about Covid-19 pandemic and described the measures to end it. I structured the language of my essay to accommodate my audience, my peers and instructor. In my essay, while I maintained a formal tone, I steered away from intricate scientific terms because I wanted my audience to be comfortable reading the essay. I engaged in multimodal composing to explore effective writing across disciplinary contexts by using images, definitions, statistics, and examples so that the readers can actually learn from my essay and educate themselves about the pandemic. A big feedback from my professor from the Memo assignment was to incorporate the sources of the assignment in a proper method. For the Lab Report, I was able to strengthen my source use practices by paraphrasing, quoting, and summarizing my sources while providing proper citations throughout the assignment. 

The fourth and final assignment was the Engineering Proposal. I decided to write a strong proposal about epidermal skin grafts. I formulated and articulated a stance through my writing because I went beyond just stating that epidermal grafting is a good choice and described why epidermal grafting is the best option and how it can be the standard procedure. My first task was to write a summary of my chosen topic. Writing the summary helped me organize my ideas for the proposal and gain an insight of how my piece can be arranged. I structured the language of my essay to accommodate the members of the American Hospital Association.  I negotiated my writing goals to fit expectations of my audience full of scientists and doctors. Since they already have knowledge about skin grafts, I did not go too much into the biology of skin grafts but instead focused on convincing them why epidermal grafting is the best and how they can implement it.

What is writing? It is a way to communicate and a medium to express my thoughts. No matter what I do, writing will always be a part of my life. Writing is a skill that can be improved with practice. Even though I might not necessarily have perfected all the learning objectives, I have definitely grown better as a writer. I learned the importance of reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing. Techniques learned in this class are now ingrained in my mind and I aim to use these techniques in my academic career and in my personal writing.