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Max Carey

Kailan Sindelar

Intro. to Technical Writing

04 August 2021

Writing Development

I’ve definitely seen an improvement in my writing throughout the semester, albeit a

short one. My main improvement comes from the fact that I’ve written so many emails

throughout my high school and college career, but never a memo or set of instructions (at least

not to this degree). It’s one thing to say you are going to write a memo or set of instructions,

but another to actually hone in on the language and style of such pieces. Instructions are

written to inform, while memos attain a certain sense of achieving a goal and displaying or

asking this to an individual or group. Prior to this class, I assumed emails and memos were the

same, and assumed I could go in with a “memo template” and write it as if it were a longer

email. The detailed presentations and video guides were very helpful in deterring this thought

though, and I’ve definitely learned when one is needed over the other. The structure of the

course has helped in learning each type of writing too, each builds upon the last a little bit and

the peer feedback is exceptionally helpful. Getting multiple pieces of feedback that all

differentiate from each other helps point out multiple instances of improvement, especially

with the length of some of our pieces of writing.

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Course Goals
I believe I met my goal for the semester (or at least close to it!) I can never pass down an
opportunity to become a better writer, and this class and its structure has helped an immense
amount. During the class, I also worked an internship under the IT department of a high school,
so the instructions portion of the class acted as a live demonstration for me. Being able to apply
the lesson we learned at work the next day was beneficial and was an interesting experience.
The technical aspect of the class was immensely helpful too. I think this class will be really
helpful in core technical classes coming up in the future, as the amount of writing that’s
expected from us has been more than I originally thought.

Assignments
I definitely enjoyed the instructions packet assignment the most and was probably my

best work in my opinion. I’m so used to writing essays and reports for other classes, but this

was a good change of pace. It was exciting to write something I had experience with (a set of

technical instructions), but different to write in a level of detail I hadn’t dealt with before.

If I were to add an assignment, I think I’d add something to differentiate between

research writing and persuasive/informative writing. I understand we delved into the topic a

bit, but as someone who’s used to primarily writing research papers for class, I feel like it can be

hard to transition into that tone without a proper introduction. Edit-wise, I think being able to

write a white page about any topic could be fun. Having to write about a topic I didn’t fully

understand was a little difficult, and I felt as if we could have written about a topic we were

already semi-familiar with.