Writing for Engineering:  

The Foundation Course           

            Over the course of the year, I have learned the importance of writing in the engineering field. A computer engineer needs more than just the capability of working with computers up their sleeves. The required communication skills, rhetoric ability and understanding of grammar are a few of the most important components of being an engineer; and these are skills we worked on strengthening in our Writing for Engineering course. This was the first course that allowed me to focus on the aspects of my field and get to understand the process needed to become a successful engineer. The relation that the topics of the assignment had to my designated field gave me the opportunity to actually learn about being a computer engineer.

The organization of a proper resume is crucial to acquiring a good job. I was always lazy with improving my resume knowing that it needed some tweaking and all my skills were not properly highlighted. Due to this assignment, I had the opportunity to construct my resume properly and transform it to an engineer’s resume. I had trouble with connecting my experiences with computer engineering as they did not have the strong correlations that I wanted but I was able to expand on what I had. I expanded to show that the responsibilities I had were in fact technical savvy. Although, the correlation is not quite strong enough and I am aware that I need more engineering experience, I have a good foundation. I was also able to learn how to construct a cover letter which allowed me to focus on how I could actually be useful to a professional company. I am more mindful of what big companies are looking for when it comes to computer engineering.

Interviewing an engineer was my favorite assignment of the whole course. I enjoyed doing this interview because I got to have a one-on-one with someone in my field that had a successful and clear road path. Learning about this road path was helpful to me as I got an insight as to what had to be done and what could go wrong. I was able to learn about what my interviewee had to go through to achieve the success that he currently has. His advice was really helpful and motivated me to get a headstart on getting to know about my field as soon as possible. He told me to attain as much hands-on experience as well and reach out to internships now rather than later as they would be helpful for my resume. I am now looking for an internship to join for this summer.

For my lab report, I focused on the format of what an actual report would look like and the topic of a dice worked well to implement with. In my experiment, I found the the probability of each likely outcome after rolling two dice. In order for me to use my results and analyze how and why everything occured, I had to make myself aware of how many possible outcomes there were and how often each outcome occurs. Evaluating my data and recording it was surprising as I had different results than what most people did online. Most people found the probable number to be 7 but I found it to be 9. Learning that results can vary in this experiment was interesting as the fact of the matter is, the dice roll is still random.

For our group proposal project, we had an eye-opening experience as we realized how many people were actually dissatisfied with our school cafeteria. It was an interesting investigation and I enjoyed talking to my peers about their experiences as well as the staff affiliated with the cafeteria. Forming a team to actually request a needed change was also a good experience as this was something we all believed in. I would investigate and propose more changes in the same format again in the future.

In my technical description, I researched the innovation of the wireless mouse. I had a great time learning about the functions and technical specifics of the device as I have always wondered how it worked. I had an idea of how it was compiled since I had prior knowledge of the transmitter and receiver, but researching it and using diagrams to make my reader understand the placement of the components and what exactly they do, gave me a better understanding as well.

Beyond the assigned projects and papers, the two aspects I found most useful from the class were the lessons on grammar and the frequent presentations we had to do. I think the grammar practice was very necessary as it often gets overlooked during most english courses. I was appreciative of the fact that we got to look at 100 examples of similar words usage. I often see many grammar mistakes from my friends and on social media and it is often said that it doesn’t matter. However, I value my ability to identify the correct usage of grammar in my writing as no one should want to be illiterate as they grow older. I was also appreciative of the various presentations we did as it was great practice for my public speaking. I think I struggled with this area at first but as we went through the different presentations, I saw improvement in my abilities to properly address an audience. I look forward to more presentations and that is something I would never do before this class.

In conclusion, this course highlighted the importance of writing in the engineering field for me and helped me improve my communication skills, rhetoric ability, grammar skills and presentation skills. Each assignment had a unique lesson to it that concentrated on these skills,  which I believe will help me become a better engineer.