Date: April 26, 2022

To: Professor Bethany Davila

From: Alexandria Longo
Subject: Reflective Memo

Why Does How You Write Matter?

Not only is casual, friendly language reserved for the more intimate situations of life, it’s
something that gains less respect in the professional world. Within this course, each project
created by myself, and my peers worked at some aspect of perfecting professional writing to
communicate clearly when it comes to the workplace of our futures. Personally, in my chosen
career and study path, writing to colleagues, attorneys, clients, and judges is the key to success.
Not only must you speak well in the courtroom, but you must also write well in the court
documents examined.

Content Development, Content Management, Production Delivery

Each of the projects were put together through multiple resources, strategies, and programs to
create the finished, final piece. By gathering research, planning out the medium and genre, and
choosing how I would execute my project, each piece was constructed and developed efficiently.
For example, identifying a family as my audience was the key in gearing my videos into more
family-friendly ones. The same applied to project two. I needed to figure out who I would
address my letter to (a principal of a high school) and how to communicate effectively with
someone who works in a school setting. When I had research the conventions of my genre,
writing the piece not only became easier, but more effective overall.

In terms of the management and delivery of my information and instructions, these depended on
the previous SLO consisting of development. Knowing my audience beforehand made doing any
writing, but particularly crafting a video and learning different programs much easier. In my own
personal experience, I’ve used iMovie for most of my video projects all throughout my
educational career. However, learning to use another program (such as TikTok) to edit in words
and writing was much harder as I had never done so. It took many attempts, and I ran through
different programs before finally settling on the piece I wanted to deliver as the finished and
fully complete one. Through my experimentation between these platforms and organizing them
together to make one cohesive piece, I feel like I improved a bit organization-wise.

Written Communication, Reviewing and Editing

Complaints and responses to those complaints was something I found myself the most familiar
with. In my own experience and in my current job, I communicate between the different
locations, job positions, and outside companies through emails. Being able to write an effective
piece is an important skill to have in any professional setting. Having a clear and direct style of
writing in both complaints and response letters is the key to earning the respect of your reader
and gaining that confidence that something will be addressed. Grammatical errors, familiarity,
avoidance of responsibility entirely, or disregard would cause a reader to grow even angrier than
they initially were, and nothing would be solved. It is important to anticipate here what your
audience (recipient of the letter) will want in order to satisfy their needs and rectify the situation.
The key, as I learned throughout the course of project two, to accomplishing all these necessities
within the letters was to constantly review and edit them. Getting outside feedback when you
struggle to answer/write a complaint will help you catch the little mistakes that could potentially
anger the recipient. Having my peers review both my letters certainly helped me to do so.

Project Planning, Organizational Design, Visual Communication

In a real workplace, collaboration in groups is something that will happen often. My own future
career will necessitate me working with a team to defend a client successfully in court. Within
my own group, delegation was the key to our success. From the start we planned out what to do
and how we could combine our efforts to create one piece that could easily fit together when
finished. We researched the data on our own and came together to combine what we found, what
we liked, and what we would use in the final project. We each wrote one section of the proposal
on our own, before putting it back into one document and all of us editing each section, adding
our own writing styles, techniques, and input in each part.

As for the visual aspects throughout this course, I always enjoy writing in a nonconventional
way. I initially had no idea the importance that visuals and design played within a professional
piece, but over the course I learned the weight each picture or element carried to create a
successful piece. I was sure that letters were just another document, but the style and visual
choices I made to format my letters were just as important as the information within. However, it
was the proposal I believe I got to play around the most with and learned a lot from. My group
and I experimented with the layouts of documents (forming two columns of writing for one
section) or choosing a layout for a slideshow and how we would make the presentation slides
flow smoothly. We moved around each section, added in the visuals in different places, and
played with our proposal until we deemed that the visual aspects aligned with the values of the
words accompanying them. If it weren’t for the layouts we designed or the timesheet that was
created, our proposal would not have been as clear as it could have.

Overall,

In each project, I learned how to work well with others to create a well-rounded, concise, and
professional piece that would be accepted in the workplace. Through the processes of each SLO,
there were many steps, hours, and effort put into each piece to make it the piece it came out to in
the end. Working in groups consisted of the same process, with the addition of learning how to
write as a collective instead of an individual. In a real workplace, collaboration in groups is
something that will happen often. My own future career will necessitate me working with a team
to defend a client successfully in court. Being able to write effectively, alone, and together, will
bring about my success in the field.