Hello everyone. My name is Ralph Godfrey and welcome to my Writing to Engineering 21007 portfolio. This portfolio contains all of the writing assignments (big and small) that I’ve done throughout the 2019 fall semester.
Currently, I am a political science major. I chose political science because of the deep passion for the city of New York that’s embedded in me. Being a part of the rapid change and having a voice for the local residents that earn an honest living that give New York its unique cultural identity is something I would like to get involved in. Growing up, I was already enamored with New York City and its profound diversity. However, after my second year in high school where I transferred to an international private school, I got a better idea of just how valuable New York City ACTUALLY was. After seeing just how badly the foreign students wanted to move to the city after high school, the pride I had for being able to call myself a New Yorker amplified, almost leading to a superiority complex arising within me.
In my first year of college, I was exploring many different classes and subject matters with an open mindset. However, I was also building lots of angst despite all of this exploring because I did not have a definite answer as to what I wanted to do career-wise as oppose to everyone else around me. The main reason I chose the City College of New York was because of the dedication and humble work ethic I saw within the students on campus. I wanted to surround myself in that environment, hoping that kind of mentally would rub off on me. Slowly but surely, I think it is as I am starting to see my scholastic pursuit align with something I want to do career-wise.
I want to combine this political science major with a minor in computer science. Having a strong understanding of how computers work is the way of the future, and a minor in computer science is enough to do so. So if I am ever on public television questioning a CEO of a tech company about the ethics of their methods, I won’t sound like a caveman.
The minor in computer science is what led me to take this class. The goal of this class was to improve the writing skills of students specifically in a professional working environment. The focus was mainly on how to convey ideas and engineering projects in the most comprehensive and efficient way possible. Throughout the semester, were given assignments that duplicated real-world scenarios and focused on course learning outcomes.
The first assignment other than the letter of introduction was the memo. In this assignment, we were to write a memo to the president of CCNY with a solution to a problem within the school. The problem I chose to discuss was the slippery floors in the basketball gym that could lead to injuries. The course-learning outcome I improved on in this assignment was formulating a stance through my writing. Throughout the memo, I had to make not only my stance on how I thought the slippery floor was hazardous very clear but also how I was going to fix the problem. By providing clear budgeting and time calculations, I eliminated any fluff. With this, I also strengthened my use of sources by integrating information I saw fit. An example is in the discussion section, I chose to include the 3 weeks experiment and take out the quotation my friend provided me. The experiment is stronger evidence to support my claim rather than the subjective anecdote provided by my friend.
The next assignment, which was the lab report, was used to analyze the style of different lab reports with a subject matter to our choosing and determining if their structural methods are effective or not. For my lab report analysis, I chose to make mine focused on the correlation between the quantity of sleep and hunger hormones. Since the subject matter of the three lab reports was almost identical, the structure was the only subject matter to focus on, which made this assignment easier for me. Through this assignment, I strengthened my source use practices in the library through the CCNY database. I spent an extensive amount of time picking out 3 lab reports that would make this assignment a lot easier than it should be. After picking three lab reports that were nearly identical, I engaged in genre analysis to explore effective writing across disciplinary contexts. I noticed that even though each lab report was similar, some lab reports made small tweaks in their sections. An example is in the abstract section. In Report #2 and Report #3, the abstracts are broken down into smaller sections with labels such as background, aims, methods and findings, and conclusion. On the other hand, Report #1 chose to combine all of this information into one large paragraph without a label, therefore being shorter and less descriptive.
The technical description, which I considered the easiest assignment, required us to write a detailed description of a product. The assignment required a table of contents and each section of the description was dedicated to the subparts that make up the final product. The assignment was easy for me because I picked an assignment I am very familiar with, which was a mini basketball hoop. This assignment relates to my writing growth because it taught me small details on how to layout a product to someone who knows nothing about it, by enhancing strategies for reading and editing. When creating the assignment, I didn’t realize how important the organization was to the overall presentation. Switching up the order of my sections created a much more effective presentation then my original submission. An example is how I presented my tools to build the product after I listed the essential objects consumers will interact with when the product is finally constructed.
The final assignment, which was a group presentation required my group and I to come up with an innovation that doesn’t exist and create a persuasive and informative live presentation to convince the audience how it could be applied to the real world. My group and I had lots of difficulty coming up with an idea. But after 3 ideas, we agreed on focusing on utilizing methane from dairy farms and commercializing it so it doesn’t go to waste when dairy farms can’t make use of it. Each group member focused on different aspects of the presentation. For example, one member focused on presentation and the introduction, another member focused on the technical description of the product and another member focused on overall budgeting. Together, we each focused on the course-learning outcome of developing and engaging in the collaborative and social aspects of the writing process. Putting words to mouth was a very easy process because our group was very well informed on the subject; therefore turning it into a persuading presentation was not very hard. The only feedback we received was sometimes using informal words or phrases to get our points across, especially during the Q&A portion of the presentation. From this, we learned not to ever get too comfortable with our audience and always remain professional.
This class overall was difficult for me because writing is a strong suit of mine. That might sound counterintuitive, but when it comes to any project that requires writing, both in and out of school, I like to go out of my way and try to be a wordsmith and write in figurative playful language. However, the goal of this class was to teach students how to write in a professional engineering environment and improve communication skills to convey one’s ideas in succinct and efficient ways. On every assignment, I was told to use less “fluff” and useless informal language. This class helped me understand what kind of language is formal and informal, since the line was blurry for me at times. But moving forward, I will continue to grow as a writer and understand my audience and the level of formality and tone required to best get my message across.
