December 11th, 2023

Dear Classmates,

As we approach the end of the semester, I believe it is the best time to look back at my progress and growth and write a reflection on my theory of writing. For me, writing isn’t just putting words on paper. I think good writing includes planning, editing, a lot of research, and multiple drafts before finalizing a paper, which requires investing a lot of time and effort. It’s like a journey where I plan, write, explore, fix things, and make it better.

I had taken a couple of English classes before and learned new things each time, and I love the fact that I keep learning new things in each class. There has always been room for more learning and progress, and I try my best to keep educating myself more and be involved in every activity in the class. However, this course, ‘Writing for Engineering,’ was particularly interesting to me as I have been planning to get my undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering, so this class prepared me for real-life situations that I would be facing in the work field.

For example, an assignment we did on technical description made me prepared for writing a paper describing any object or specific instruments to work colleagues. Likewise, the Informational Report helped me build my knowledge of the importance of sustainability to prevent the ecosystem. With a huge amount of research, I gained a lot of insights into the advantages of sustainability and ways to prevent it for future generations. In Civil Engineering there is lot of constructing and building with use of harmful chemicals so learning more about limiting the toxicants and promoting sustainability surely will be useful in my career. Next, we did a PSA project where we, as a group, came up with a problem and an organization that helps tackle it and raised awareness about it. After that, one of our main projects was the technical innovation proposal, which heavily based on our interests in inventing anything in the respective field to help in any way. Personally, this was my favorite project as we planned to innovate something in our interest in the field and pitch the proposal. Due to my deep interest in the engineering field, I was very excited to come up with a plan and work with the team throughout the process. Planning from the idea of proposing and researching, tackling its disadvantages, and finally coming up with a plan that worked was surely stressful, but I was filled with excitement, and with a successful plan, every effort put into it felt worth it. The projects we pitched during the session really helped me gain insights into many fields.

Looking back, I realized failing is okay, but at the end, what counts is that you tried and didn’t stop until you got it right. I used to plan a lot and try to get everything right on the first go. But as we went through the assignments in this class, I learned it’s okay to go back and make things better. Each assignment taught me that feedback is important, and making changes is a normal part of writing. Talking with everyone in the class, getting feedback from the professor and other classmates, and looking at different examples and resources helped me the most. Not only that, listening to my other classmates pitch, projects, and presentations gave me some more insights; different ideas and opinions made me think about writing in new ways.

I can confidently say, compared to my writing before, my writing now will help not only in school but also in the work field and my everyday life. I learned that retrying, getting experienced opinions and going back to fix things, cooperating with teammates, researching, evaluating the credibility, and lastly, being able to change things can be very useful in all sorts of situations.

To conclude, the way I write now sounds free and flexible, meaning it doesn’t strictly follow just one way of writing and explores every way to find the most suitable way of writing for different kinds of topics. It’s more like a journey that can change and get better rather than completing a course and never looking back again. What I learned here, along with what I read and discussed, gave me skills I can use in many different situations.

Lastly, I would like to thank everyone involved for sharing this class with me. It was a great learning experience that I would always be thankful for. My foundation has been better than ever thanks to my Writing for Engineering class.

Best, Niky