CHARLIZE LEMENI

Going into this class, I did not know what to expect. I was concerned with the tone of my writing and figured that this class would need a lot of formal writing because it is a requirement for my major. My biggest fear was that I would be bad at formatting and accidentally end up plagiarizing something. Learning how to write in a professional manner is a goal I had coming into this class and  focused on. With this in mind, I wanted to find different ways to incorporate the four big assignments in this class into my life. 

The first big assignment was writing my resume. In the past I had tried to write my own resume and gave it to friends and family to look over and revise. Working on it in class, I was able to refine it and make it better than I had before. Because I was aiming for an A grade on this assignment, I had to write a cover letter as well which is something I did not originally know how to do. I aimed the cover letter I for an internship that I had been looking forward to applying to this semester. I felt confident with my cover letter, so I applied to it! I think that it was a great experience writing this cover letter and once I finished writing it, I ended up using my resume made in class to submit to that same internship. Although not much, I did receive good feedback which made my resume better. I am very proud of my resume because it's all the work I have ever done compiled into one sheet of paper.

The second big project was the Research Proposal. When writing this, I had to consider what to write and who I was writing to. I needed to understand what to write in order to convey anything to my audience. I didn't know what to write at first but after talking to my professor about a rain garden they were having installed, I decided to write it on a topic I knew I could have a conversation about. I chose the topic of rain gardens, since my professor already knew about it. This led me to figure out what made me want to have that conversation with them, and how I could convey this research project towards a hypothetical journal.  I had to start with the big three rhetorical devices: ethos, logos, and pathos. Each of the three hold a significant value, one showing how this can emotionally connect to others (pathos), another showing credibility on why its believable (ethos), and the last to show the data and display facts on the "why" aspect. In the letter, I showed pathos first by describing how rain gardens help pollution and save endangered native plants. I then showed my ethos by stating how I am majoring in Civil Engineering and how I am already invested in this type of topic. Finally, I show logos by showing credible sources for rain gardens. I believe that my letter shows a good knowledge on the three different types of rhetoric and believe that the letter made me more motivated to continue with this topic.

The third big project done for this class was the bibliography. I learned a lot about databases, and how to research efficiently and effectively. One strategy that I found to be useful is to find sources through one good source. It was easy to find different articles, either recent or from a while ago, if you looked at who cited these articles. When looking for my first source, I didn't know exactly what to look out for which made it hard to know which source to use and which source to discard. There was a lot of information that I found to be useless and others which just barely answered my questions but broadened my paper. It was overwhelming to know which site to use, but once I found one that let me customize the Boolean operators, I was set. It was also really helpful to look out for sources that were credible, authors that had a strong ethos, science based journal publications, and the time frame of when it was created to allow myself to really question the ethos of a source. When I got the sources I needed, putting them into APA format was not bad at all. I previously was working on refining some journal publications at my job, so I already had a background in writing in APA, though Google Scholar helped with the pre written citations. It was nice to learn how I could incorporate quotes and allow them to flow into my sentences, and how they go unnoticed when reading aloud. I had always thought that there was only one form of introducing a quote. The variety of it all really allowed me to gain a better understanding on how I can use them, and I feel confident in using quotes in my writing.

The last big project was the Research Review. In this, we had to take notes of all our sources. This was the most tedious task which took me multiple days because I could not find a note taking method that worked the best for me until I was almost done with annotating the articles. The best strategy was taking them all down on a google doc sheet then transferring it into the Excel sheets. This made it easier to find the information I needed. This strategy is one that I will be using in the future due to it being the most organized way to store my points in a comprehensible format. The outlining process was very efficient once I had my sources annotated with all my key points. I wrote out all the answers to my research questions and sub-questions. The conference with Professor Nolan helped quite a lot during this process, especially with their natural tendency to break things down into simple, easy steps. This led writing the paper to be easy work that I did in less than a day. The peer review in class helped by showing me my strengths and weaknesses, although in one of the latest peer reviews I sought it best to continue to write on my paper for it not being completed to my standards. I had a few friends take a look and help me with my paper. The process for writing the research review was not as difficult as I thought it would be.

In all, I feel more confident in my writing than I did in the beginning of this semester. This class allowed me to reach outside of my comfort zone and into a better mindset in taking on writing assignments. I am most proud of the research review because of the effort and planning I put into it. It allowed me to gain a better confidence in taking bigger assignments like it. In the future, I now know how to practically construct a resume, a cover letter, a proposal letter, annotated bibliography, and a research letter for school and future companies. This class showed me how to use different writing strategies which I will continue to use in all aspects of my life. I believe writing an effective research proposal will benefit me the most because of where my career might take me. Something that really helped me out this semester is to make sections of assignments due at different times because it limits the stress of having to do an entire paper in one week and evenly spaced out the workload. Extra credit and peer review also drove me to be on time with my work because I did not want to be the reason someone else did not get a chance to fully complete their assignment. This class has taught me a lot more than I had expected, and I have benefited greatly from being in this class.