Reflection Essay

Writing has always been a struggle. Most of my English classes to date have always
focused on literary analysis. I have had very little experience with technical writing.
Even in my sciences classes, most of the writing has been in the form of lab reports,
representing scientific writing. This is the first class that I have taken that has
focused on what I would classify as business writing, such as emails and memos. As
such, I believe that there has been some improvement in my writing as I have
progressed through the class. The class has allowed me to explore different writing
styles and different media, such as the 360-degree video. The peer editing portion
was also helpful because it provides a different perspective and many of the
critiques were quite useful. My only suggestion would be that it would have been
useful to receive some of the corrections in a more timely fashion, so that I could
have avoided repeating the same errors in subsequent assignments. I recognize that
this class was given over a very short period of time, which likely accounts for the
difficulties in returning the edits on the assignments. I appreciate, however, that I
have the opportunity to make some of these corrections for my final portfolio.

The ability to make the edits is particularly important since my original goals for the
class were to perform well in the class and to improve my skills in technical writing.
Thus far, I feel that I have done well in the course and believe that I have shown
improvement in my writing. I was able to accomplish my goals through hard work
and dedication. I attempted to look at all my peer’s efforts and critiques to try to
identify what worked well and what did not. I also believe that I benefited from
choosing a topic that I am passionate about. As a biology major, I have always
enjoyed learning about human anatomy and infectious diseases. I had previously
taken a parasitology class, so I was familiar with many of the diseases that I
discussed. This provided a useful background and allowed me to focus on the
writing rather than trying to comprehend the technical information. I noticed that
many of the students in the class were engineering majors. It might be helpful to add
topics that they would find interesting, such as computers, or hardware etc. This
might allow for students in other majors to find a topic that they might enjoy more.

The assignment that I am most proud of is my white paper packet. This was the
assignment that took the most time, but I also believe that it was my best work in
the class. I think that the report had a meaningful problem and a solution that is
readily applicable to today’s society. I think finding eco-friendly means of
controlling mosquito populations is very important, as a means of controlling
disease. One additional assignment that I would find useful would be a persuasive
argument that could be presented in a video format. It could be a 2-3 minute video
about our topic, with the goal of trying to persuade a company to implement our
proposed solution. This would fit well with this class, as it would be more practice
with immersive media that we could use in the future. The assignment I found most
challenging was the email and memo. I understand the utility of this assignment but
it was very difficult because the instructions were somewhat vague, and as opposed
to the other assignments, we did not have any examples so it was difficult to create. I
finally had better insight of what was expected when I was able to visualize some of
my peers’ memos on the discussion posts.