Iqra Qumar

May 15, 2016

Through the Looking Glass:

A Reflection of Writing for Engineering

Writing has always been a part of my life as the education system requires students to write essays and the like. Writing essays has always been quite boring in the sense that we do not get to choose our topics, which makes it restrictive. In Writing for Engineering, we were able to choose any topic for our assignments as long as it was a part of our major at City College. This helped me learn a lot more about what I was getting myself into as I am majoring in Computer Science.

The first assignment we did was the resume and the cover letter. I had never made an actual resume because I have never had a job, so this assignment helped me learn how to do it for the future. I struggled to write this in the beginning but as I looked in our textbook for examples, I was able to put both the resume and cover letter together. Reading our textbook was really helpful for not only this assignment, but for all of them. The book shows different examples of everything we did, so I was able to easily learn more on the topics. I know I will be able to use this in the future because I will be applying to jobs soon and they require resumes.

The interview project was the second assignment. This was really hard for me because I could not find anyone to interview until I asked a friend of mine. I was still deciding whether I should do compute science or computer engineering, so I interviewed a computer engineer. Not being able to meet face to face was tough, but I still learned a lot because of all the questions we came up with in class. A big part of this was also reading because the textbook helped me learn how to properly interview a person. This is the main assignment that showed me that I would rather do computer science than computer engineering. By learning about the job of a computer engineer, I realized that I preferred to do coding and easier stuff than what my interviewee did. So, I have this assignment to thank for finally helping me decide.

The next assignment was the lab report. This was actually really fun for me because I got to implement my coding skills. I had fun using the code that I made do all the dice rolls since it was an easier way to do the experiment. We used APA citation for this report, and it was my first time ever using it. I had only heard of it a few times, so I was scared I would not be able to do it properly since I had grown used to doing MLA. It was not that hard and that made me feel at ease. For this project, we had to take into account the audience. This is a formal lab report, so I pictured actual scientists and scholars reading my report. That is why I tried to be very professional and present my data in a sophisticated manner. I also used the CCNY library or information literacy. It was hard to navigate at first, but I am very glad that we had a lesson in class on how to access the library. This helped me in my research because I was able to find scholarly articles to cite in my essay.

After the lab report, we had the group proposal. This was our first group project and I was excited since we got to pick our own group members. I chose my friends and I knew that we would have no problems doing the work together since we are all good students and hardworking. Collaboration was a big part for this project because we all had to work together in order to do all the parts that were required. I remember thinking that this work would be very hard. However, once you divide it amongst four people, it gets done very quickly and efficiently. We had a few drafts that we revised along the way in order to get the finished result. I was basically the leader of the group and I helped everyone complete everything correctly and on time. I also checked grammar because that is a big part in writing a good proposal. We also had to consider audience for this project since we were presenting a proposal to change something about CCNY. The audience would have been the higher staff at our college since they are the only ones who can implement the changes. This required a lot of research from outside information literacy or our own library in order to persuade them to do want we want. We used technology for this project in the form of PowerPoint, where we displayed our information on the board. APA citation was used for this as well. This helped me learn that in the real world, I will have to do this with other people all the time. Proposals happen all the time and this was a good way to start learning how to make one.

Lastly, we had the technical description. This was by far my favorite project and that is because I was able to do it on artificial intelligence. I have always been fascinated by this topic, so being able to do a whole project on it and tell the class about it was a great experience. I used the library for this to get some scholarly resources about the ethics of AI. APA citation was used for this as well. I think I had the most fun with this project was because it stimulated my interest the most since artificial intelligence is what got me into computer science in the first place. This assignment helped me learn more about why I wanted to major in computer science in the first place. Being able to present this topic in front of the class helped me in the sense that I was able to share my thoughts on the topic and my classmates would be able to learn more about it as well. It was overall really fun for me to be able to get more reasons to continue being a computer science major.

Coming to class everyday was a big deal to me because I had realized how important this class was for my future. We learned things that would actually benefit us in the future and that was huge. Professor Bubrow always made our lectures fun and interesting, which could be the reason why English is one of my favorite subjects now. We also learned how to properly write emails, although I already knew how to do that. Nonetheless, I learned many different ways to write a professional email.

A big part of this class was the grammar lessons. I know that we are in college, but grammar is still a big issue for some people. English is my second language, so I still end up making mistakes despite trying very hard to perfect it. The lessons about using proper punctuation, FANBOYS, and even spelling were a huge help in learning and writing. I think that no one’s English is perfect, so it was great that our professor took time to teach us things that we may not have known. We took a grammar quest, which is a mixture of a quiz and a test. It was fairly easy as we had reviewed for it. However, it was really helpful because it tested us on our lessons to see if we had been paying attention. I liked the quest because it was easy for me to finish and made me think that I had learned a lot.

A lot of these assignments used APA citation, information literacy, reading, and technology. We used Blackboard a lot to submit our assignments once we were done with them. There was also synthesis in these assignments because I was able to take what I learned from one assignment and use it for another. It also happened when I used scholarly sources from the library database and combined that information with my own. I know writing is a learning process since every assignment you get is something new. This class was able to show me that you can learn a lot of real-world stuff, unlike what high school has taught you. I came into Writing for Engineering expecting it to be mainly based on engineering things, which seemed very boring to me. Instead, I left having learned many things that would help me prosper in the future.