Writing for engineering reflection

How a course shapes a student 

A course is always taught to a student to give them knowledge about a specific subject, usually associated with their major. But how much change can a course do, how much can it truly affect a student. Well writing for engineering is a course taken by stem, generally engineering majors. Stem students learn everything about code, physics, technology and math, but these disciplines cannot prepare a student for things such as resumes, interviews, and other real world career related tasks. Writing for engineering is here to build a student into a presentable, business ready adult. Build a student into someone who is able to apply, interview, and present for jobs. Everything from cover letters, to grammar fixing, to socialization skills. It makes engineers, more than just robots who can solve complex problems.

Our first major assignment was to write up a mock job application. We searched and found a real job posting online that we would consider applying for one day, and we wrote up a cover letter, resume, and copied the job description. I believe this assignment was crucial, not because we will need it post graduation, but right now. As a freshman, I along with many students I know are desperately applying for internships, and entry level college aid jobs. This workshop/assignment we did, not only helped us get our foot into the door, but pointed out the mistakes we were making, and how to fix those mistakes in order to have higher chances of success applying.

Second up, was a lab report. Everyone had the same concept, write a lab report on dice rolling probability. This project not only had us improve our paper writing capabilities, as well as our reading but also allowed us to think like engineers on probability of dice. A combination of the best of both worlds. I have written many lab reports before, but this one allowed me to discover something very important as an upcoming engineer. Always, always think outside the box, no matter how much confidence you have. Certain things can always be different than they seem, especially in math and logic. In math, there are always unlimited possibilities. We were tasked with synthesizing, and gathering information and data for our project.

Other smaller assignments we as a class completed were an introducing ourselves discussion board. This wasn’t anything major, but it certainly helped my nervous self feel a little more comfortable, and social with the students in one of my classes. It is good to have someone I can reach out to when questions about assignments arise. Or even just someone to talk to throughout the day. Having at least one interaction with a student can make all the change.

Proposal writing. As engineers, one day hopefully we will all be tasked with building something, in one way or another. Whether thats a website., a machine, or a building, we will collaborate with a team, and execute the project. In this case, it was a building. A building for our school. We had an in class session, to thoroughly learn what a student center is. What they look like, student centers in other schools, they’re function, as well as the space they take up. We were put into groups, and had a simple task. Come up with a proposal for a student center for CCNY, and figure out every single detail. Where it will hypothetically be built, how you will build it, the cost, how many floors, how long the construction will take, and many more minute details. Each member in each group was tasked with a different section of the project, and as a team we figured out the best way to construct a brand new student center for our University. We started with the drafting process, and revised from there. Once the final draft was completed, we shifted it into a presentation, and each group presented to the class their own build plan. The idea of this assignment isn’t necessarily meant to teach students how to build a University building, but to plan out a form of action for a company, figure out why it makes sense to execute this plan, and present it to a board of members.

This counts as well. This assignment I am currently in the midst of completing is a part of this course. It is simple, a reflective essay Students take every major assignment they have completed (essentially they were all major), and write a paragraph on it describing the task. Introduce and conclude it, and that is our portfolio essay. We take all of our assignments on paper, and organize them in a portfolio. A folder style resume for everything we have learned/completed in this course. Essentially, this is the last assignment to be completed, but was started halfway through to avoid the burden at the end of the semester. The portfolio was created, as well as the introduction and concluding paragraph. We write and add projects to the folder and essay as we go through the course.

Students only took one exam this year. The quest assignment was a very specific exam given to students to test their knowledge on what had been taught in class. Fixing grammatical errors in sentences, defining abbreviations, and cleaning up patchy sentences were just a few of what students were tested on. Everything had been discussed in class prior in one way or another, but it was all up to the students to prove what they had learned.

Last, but not least, the Writing for engineering technical description. This was an opportunity to express themselves. Show their creativity, as well as their potential presenting about something they are passionate about to an audience. This can be related to their major, their personal interests, or anything they want. They gave a detailed presentation to the class on what they chose, the in’s and out’s, everything they were able to provide information on, they did. This was done on a poster board with several sections, images, and descriptions, as well as of course, citations. 

To conclude things, the reason why writing for engineering is different when compared to all the other courses is, it builds us in a way where other courses wont. Citations, drafting, and trial and error experiments aren’t something we can or will learn elsewhere, especially at the college level. The use of technology helps us feel a little more comfortable when entering other classes, so it’s important for a change in flow in the life of a student.