My name is samuel ortiz. I am attending the city college of new york city as an undergraduate. I have just completed my 2nd semester of college in May 2023 and my class in writing for engineering. I plan to major in computer science or software engineering at this college as these fields of study interest me very much. Throughout my time in this Writing for an Engineering class, I learned to write a multitude of things like Technical descriptions, Memorandums, a lab report, and conduct a rhetorical analysis of a text I was not necessarily familiar with. I expected this class to be rigorous and very difficult because I originally had the idea that engineers must write perfect, in-depth difficult to understand, pieces of literature. Whether the purpose was to inform someone about an idea, interact with peers, or to interact with an employer. But as I went through this course I soon realized that I was grasping the knowledge of how these engineers write quicker than I originally thought. I was expecting to do horribly in the class as writing literature has not been one of my strong suits in my academic career. With the fact that writing not being an area I excel, I came into the course with a pessimistic mindset. But by participating in class discussions and completing assignments I soon realized that I growing my skills and obtaining the knowledge that I will later use to communicate within the engineering world. Having gained this knowledge and actually understanding it, I became more confident in my skills not only as a writer but also as a student on my way to becoming a college graduate.
Throughout my quest to conquer the forms of communication in the engineering world, I was able to interact with a class full of students with different background knowledge, different levels of comprehension, and much more. This was a benefit to my learning because it allowed me to discuss with others about assignments and increase my understanding of whatever topic we were discussing. For example, in class, we were discussing how to write a description of one of our big assignments, specifically phase 4 (the rhetorical analysis of an engineering proposal). We sat around in a circle and bounced ideas off of each other on how we can clearly and concisely describe what the assignment was about and what you as an individual did in the assignment. This allowed me to use others’ ideas to inspire my ideas in what I wanted to write about. As humans are social creatures, I feel like it is an important part of my academic career to be able to interact with other students as it boosts my confidence in my thoughts and my experience in working with others.
Phase 1.1 was a phase dedicated to technical writing and its purpose was to help us get a grasp of what technical writing even was. I learned that technical writing was mainly used to describe any information or process that is very complex and needs very specific and descriptive ways. In this section, we focused on what would be the rhetorical situation in this context. I was pretty new to rhetorical situations as I had just first heard it in my first semester of college but I had a grasp on it pretty well.
Phase 1.1 leads into phase 1.2 which was actually using technical writing to create a technical description. The purpose of this assignment was to break us into literature in the engineering world. We were given examples of what technical descriptions were and where they are used. Technical descriptions are descriptions written on products, machines, or processes that require very descriptive specifications to be described in a way that the reader can understand. In our class, we were to write a technical description of a staples cardboard box. It seemed easy enough but when it came time to then create the technical description I found that I had to use a different lens to think about what needed to go into the technical description so that if someone were to use this technical description, would they be able to make a 1 to 1 replica of the box. This leads to the rhetorical situation in this context. The audience would likely be a manufacturer, the author would be the person or company needing the box to be made, and the message we would be trying to convey would be that we want this box to be made and it has to be exactly as it is written in the technical description. I believe that this assignment helped me look at the finer details in anything that I am working on to get a better understanding of how or what I am doing in the engineering field.
Phase 2 was relatively easy. I was to understand what a memorandum was and create my own. A memorandum is a piece of writing from one person to another, usually in a work setting, that informs one of a problem, gives context to that problem, a call to action, and a way for the person to get back to them about the problem. In this assignment, we had to create a memorandum for having finished the technical description for the staples box and that it is ready to be sent off to the manufacturer. Then I wrote a memorandum to the facilities department of CCNY, asking them to fix the escalators in the building. This allowed me to become more comfortable with asking for things to get done and informing peers and colleagues. I learned how to write what I need to write and only what I need to write to make sure I get across what needs to be talked about, clearly and concisely
Phase 3 was the longest. This assignment started with us being taught about information literacy. We were to go on Google, Google Scholar, and a database with our chosen search phrase and record the first 10 links from each search tool. Then we were to analyze a lab report written on the same experiment we did and conduct our own. Next, we analyzed each section of the lab report we read, and what the purpose of each section was. Following that, we organized our data into a Google form and assigned rankings to each source we found showing how “good” the source was for our purposes. Finally, we created a complete lab report with all the information we collected and we grew our understanding of lab reports, how to write them, and how important information literacy is. This phase was the most important for me because I actually felt like I was learning information that I could use in the future but also I could use this idea of information literacy in my other courses to succeed in any assignments that required information gathering. Being able to interact with my peers in this phase helped because when you are doing an experiment it is given that you will be comparing results with others and seeing what others did differently to help further their experiment. This will help me in the future by allowing me to be more comfortable with doing something incorrectly or doing something in a different way than others.
Phase 4 was the hardest in my opinion. In phase 4 we were to complete a rhetorical analysis of an engineering proposal that had terminology that was hard for someone at my graduate level to understand. I picked the engineering proposal titled, “ Fake news detection within online social media using supervised artificial intelligence algorithms” by Feyza Altunbey Ozbay and Bilal Alatas. While reading this engineering proposal I was dumbfounded by how much of the actual content I did not understand. But what mattered was what rhetorical moves where they used in each section of the proposal to achieve the purpose of each section. Next, we were to write an essay on my rhetorical analysis of my chosen engineering proposal. This allowed me to complete an analysis of a piece of text I knew nothing about. Through this phase, we were able to peer review each other’s work and see what we could improve on and what we should do to get across our points and claims.
In essence, being able to interact with others, and practice rhetorical moves and situations helped me increase my confidence in writing classes. I’ve proved to myself that I can interact with others with different levels of knowledge and comprehension than me. This semester has been hard in some aspects about time management and finding time for myself to only worry about my studies but I gained a sense of maturity that regardless of what happens in my life, my studies take top priority. Building my knowledge and understanding of literature in the engineering world is very important because that is what will set me aside from the rest of my peers if I continue to practice all the things I learned this semester.
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