Journal 1 (2/4/21):

              Today was the first day of class and I would say that it went well. I am interested in how writing for engineering is going to work, as I do not really understand what it is we are going to do, but I am excited to find out. I am also interested on how zoom-less classes will go, but it seems we will do everything on discussion boards, which is fitting for an English class. We did not do anything big for our first day of instruction as we were just introducing ourselves. I was able to speak to many of my classmates on what their interest are and why they are taking this class.

              Today, I have done my first assessment, which was to locate an article that involves engineering and to write a brief description on it. The professor gave us our time, which is honestly a blessing as I went through multiple articles until I found the one I am interested in. I chose an article called Cyberpunk was supposed to be the biggest video game of the year. What happened? By the New York Times. This interested me as it is a hot topic as of now and I definitely have some knowledge in this area. The article talks about the deception that the company, CD Project Red, portrayed to its customers and also the harsh working conditions that their employees had to operate in. Next week I will use this article for something bigger, so all I can do now is wait and see.

Journal 2 (2/11/21):

              Today I have done my first “real” assignment in my writing for engineering class. I had to read the first chapter of our textbook, “Technical Communication”. I got to say that I am starting to understand what exactly it is that this class does. Reading the first chapter, it focuses mainly on audience but also provides 8 key terms when dealing with writing a technical document. Reading more of the chapter, I am starting to understand that writing for engineering is about technical documents, such as manuals to technological products. It is definitely a writing area in which I am not to familiar with, but I am sure I will be able to adapt to this type of writing style in the days to come. The chapter really dived into the importance of your audience and how when writing your document, you must keep your audience in mind. In a lot of ways, this makes total sense to me. If you are writing a manual with the intent to teach the audience how to use a certain product, you have to make sure you understand who you are dealing with in order to understand what way you can write the document. Questions you would need to consider would be: do you need to include pictures? Should explanations be short or do they need further elaboration? Should the document notify the reader of every little detail, or is the reader informed enough before reading this document?

              Additionally, today I also had to post on a discussion board about which of the 8 key terms described in the book did I find to be the most important. For that, I chose that honesty was the most important.

Journal 3 (Week3 ( 2/16-2/18/2021):

              So far in Writing for Engineering, most of the work has been from reading excerpts of the textbook and giving our opinion on what we have thought. Basically, the beginning of this course has been a dive into the types of documents we are expected to write. I liked it as I was quite confused at the beginning of this course, but now I am 99.9% certain I understand what it is that we would be doing. However, today it is time to start my first big assessment in this writing for engineering course, which is the Technical Description. The technical description is the first of many major essays that are to come into this course. From what my professor posted on Blackboard, we can choose any type of technological product of our choice to describe. I am deciding to describe the Nintendo Switch, only because that is something that has my interest of now and it would be more fun to write about. I have to do more research on what exactly a technical description looks like, but I do not think that it should be to hard.

              Today, the professor asked us to write on a discussion forum about the product that we have chosen to describe and our intended audience and purpose of this technical description. My audience for this technical description would be my professor and my classmates, and luckily enough many people told me that they own and use a Nintendo Switch. With that in mind, I do not have to really worry about describing extremely basic features of the Nintendo Switch because it looks like most of my audience already knows it. My purpose for this technical description is to try to explain how exactly the Nintendo Switch works. This is something new for me so it will be fun to research and learn about, especially since I am really interested in how the Nintendo Switch “switches”.

Journal 4 (2/23-2/25/21):

              Today, my professor for my Writing for Engineering class has instructed that we create out first outline for the class. In high school, outlines were the same as our drafts, but I read that these were different than drafts so I was a little bit confused. However, when reading on, I was able to understand the way an outline was and it started to be less confusing. Essentially, it was marker points for me to look back on when conducting my first draft, so a blueprint. Additionally, it would give my professor an idea of how I was going to create my Technical Description, so that if I ever needed help he would know were exactly to guide me. I found the three sources that I would be using for my Technical Description and started to plan out my technical description. I marked down the basic points in which I would talk about in each specific paragraph, such as what would the introduction talk about. I also started to plot out in what ways will I integrate my sources within my technical description.

              Today, I am gearing up to finish my first draft for my technical description. Before I upload it, I must say I am not entirely happy with it. As of now, it is to late to change anything so all I can have now are regrets. For starters, I felt like I made the introduction to information heavy and it started to drag on. I gave context that wasn’t needed and made my technical description feel more so as a history of the product. Additionally, I feel like I could have integrated the sources much better rather than saying information with no credit to where I had found it. Thankfully, my professor does not grade drafts on the content, so all I can do now is reflect with what I think is bad about this first draft and fix it to make a better final paper.

Journal 5(3/2-3/8/21):

              Today, I had done my first peer review for my Writing for Engineering class. I have had done peer reviews in my previous English class last semester, so it is nothing I am totally new to. While I am familiar with them, however, it is still nerve racking to see what someone else thinks about your work and topic. The feedback I gotten was nothing to much to worry about though. I really liked this experience for a couple of reasons. First off, it is nice to know what someone thinks of your paper as it helps you learn what needs changing and perfecting and also helps you learn what you did well. Knowing your rights and wrongs help you improve exponentially, especially since these peer reviews give me the opinion of my audience, as the audience for my paper is my classmates. Secondly, reading other peoples papers give you inspiration and new ideas on how to format your own paper. I liked the way my classmates formatted their papers, and I really want to change mine up to make them look similar. It also gave me a better understanding of what is expected of a technical description.

              Today, I started finishing up my final draft for my technical description assignment. I changed things based off of the advice that I had received from not only my peer from the peer review, but my professor as well. The only problem I had faced while finish up this technical description was the writing fatigue. I have not written a paper since December, so I have to get used to professional writing. Reading over my draft, I realized how it sounded more like I was talking to a person rather than it being a technical description. As a result, I am finding sources that prove my points as well as editing the document to sound less like I am talking to someone and more so a written document.

Journal 6(3/9-3/11/21):

              Today in my writing for engineering class, we have started to work on our next assignment, which is to write a memo for a better New York. However, the strange thing about this assignment is that we would be working in groups of three, which I am really interested to see how it works. I introduced myself to my team and read their post about themselves, and I have to say I am really exited to work in this group. My groupmates seem to be really bright people, so I am sure that we would be able to get this done, whatever it is we decide to write our memo on. Both of my groupmates proposed that we should write a memo about the subway stations in New York City as they are terrible. I proposed that we should write a memo about creating our own city or something similar to that fashion. One of my groupmates had also created a group chat server so we can discuss more on the assignment. I am really glad she did as I know this will help out exponentially on our group project as it will make everything easier to do as we can all contact each other no matter the time of day.

              Today, we were told to assign ourselves responsibilities and roles for the memo. I assigned myself with the research coordinator role in our group. Basically, what I will be doing is finding the resources that my group will use in our memo for our drafts. Additioanly, my group has decided on a topic. We will be doing a memo on the problems of outdoor dining and how they are limiting parking space.

Journal 7(3/23/21):

              Today in my writing for engineering class, we had to submit our finished outline for our memo asigment. We also had to comment on our thoughts of how we did. As I stated in the discussion forum, I am not really happy with the work that I put into the memo. I was responsible for the resources and recommendations to the problem. On the research front, I felt like I did a really good job at. I was able to be contacted whenever my group members needed anything. When one of my group members texted me saying that she needs a scholarly source for one of her points, I got up from what I was doing to go straight to my computer and find her the source. I felt my role was fulfilled and I was really good at finding the articles. Along with finding the articles, I also read them fully and gave a short paragraph summary about them, sending it to my group so they can briefly read and decide which articles they will like to use for their part in the outline. However, while I have felt like I did a good job as the resource conductor, I did not like the way I wrote my part in the draft. I worked on the recommendations and felt like it lacked resources. I did not use any quotes at all, so it mostly felt like an opinionated piece. Additionally, I felt like I could have constructed it better, more so the way it sounds.

Journal 8 (5/13/21):

              Today in Writing For Engineering, we were given our prompt for the final assignment as well as the prompt for out final discussion board. I would start off talking about the final discussion board. The prompt that we had to answer was, “What does writing mean to you?” This is a very thought-provoking question because what does it mean? It is so easy to say it means a lot, but given the opportunity to think about it, my mind started to get cluttered. My thoughts about writing evolved as the class progressed, as I started to see how important the skill was for my career path. So, I took consideration to the question. When thinking about all the different assignments that I had done in the course, and taking account everything, I learned, I came with such a simple answer, yet meaningful. Writing was a form of self-expression. When writing my assignments, I was able to show people the way that I thought. From the topics that I chose to the way I decided to address them, people were able to gather an understanding as to who I am as a person. I am pretty sure people learned my passion for games through the many works I had done on the subject and many discussions I would have with people about the topic. Speaking on discussion with others, I was also able to find a glimpse of how my classmates are as people. While this class had no zoom call, we communicated with each other only by writing. I never got to hear how my classmates sound like or even see them, but we were able to still connect through our writing. We formed connection through our interpretations of each other based on how and what we wrote. For the Self-Assessment, I am not to intimidated by it. I had done a self-assessment for my previous English class, so I already have a sense on what is expected.

Journal 9 (5/20/21):

              Today I finished all of my other finals, so it is time I start the Self-Assessment paper. When I was preparing for it, I read the questions that I was asked to answer. The questions do not seem to hard and I am sure that I mastered at least half of these skills. Its also nice to take a trip down memory lane as I go back and read every assignment that I turned in. I have noticed an improvement in my writing skills rereading everything, especially from the Technical Description to the Memo. In my previous English class, the way we wrote the self-assessment were to write a small paragraph explaining how we met the skill along with a picture of evidence. I am going to do the same for the self-assessment as I do not know how I will quote discussion boards and things alike. Additionally, there would be parts where I have to show that I am able to uses and integrate sources, and I am not sure how I can quote a resources page.

              So far, my self-assessment is going pretty well. I have outlined everything that I am going to talk about to make it easier for me when I must write the full thing. I also took screenshots of all the pieces of evidence that I am going to use. This is my final assignments for the semester, and then it would be off to calc and other classes. I am going to take as much time as I can for this assignment to, because writing is not one of my best skills and I want to make sure I can assess myself as best as I can.

Journal 10 (5/24/21):

              I purposely waited to write my final journal when I finished every assignment for this course. It really feels like I started this entire journey yesterday, as cliché as that sounds. I remember one of the earliest thoughts I had of this class was “what exactly is this? How would it be different from any other English course.” I am going to be honest and say that I have never thought about the way English overlaps with engineering. It kind of is a misleading idea that engineering is all math and science and that an English course is something an engineering major would take just because it is a requirement. I was one of the people that believed in that stereotype and thought as long as I do what I am told and get a good grade, everything should be fine. However, when I started to read the textbook, I learned things that I wasn’t expecting. For example, in the textbook there is a portion where they talk about audience and the importance of communicating well. When I read that, I had a thinking moment. Never have I ever thought about the audience, because why should I? As obvious as its importance sounds, I always thought you can just make what you want and put it out. Additionally, I have a mindset where people would understand what I am talking about if I am understanding it, which is obviously fraud. While I do not think I did it well, during this course I tried my best to keep this in mind. It’s a habit that I recently am trying to get rid of, to explain complex topics in which I am knowledgeable in but the audience isn’t. While I do not feel like I accomplished that in this course, I do think the attempt I tried to during this course was beneficial as practice makes perfect.

              I am always thankful when I get a calm and understanding professor that teaches the course. I learn better when I am not under pressure, as I am sure most do. Professor Otte is understanding given any situation and loves to see his classmates become friends, if anything he heavily pushes for it. I met people due to his peer reviews and also the memo group project. His excitement for the course is what got me to actually try in an English class, and while I do not see writing as my best skill, going forward I am going to start practicing.