As the month of May dawns upon the semester, this means the end of the term comes with it. English 21007 has proven to be a really great course to be in more than what I had expected it to be. With college professors, I usually keep my expectations low as to what quality they should be just so I won’t be disappointed when the semester begins. I had initially thought that this course would just be secondary compared to my calculus class as my previous general English class mostly just revolved around writing prompts with general research about it. These assignments were done by ourselves with no real class involvement and as a result, I shifted more focus onto studying for exam material. However, when everything in this class was said and done, what I had been doing and my take away from each coursework experience blew my low expectations out of the water.

The first assignment for any course is important for both the student to get a grasp on what the standards should be when it comes to writing and the professor for setting the tone for their own class. When it came down to writing a cover letter and a resume for a job that was listed that related to our major, I as the student found this approach to writing really unique. Since this was an English class related to engineering, getting into the job market after a degree requires something as crucial as a resume and cover letter to get right in order to get the role and this twist in making us choose an actual job and writing as if we were going to apply to it was really good. Relating this assignment to my personal life back in high school, I applied for part-time jobs when I turned 16 using resumes. I pretty much used the internet in order to structure one and even though I ended up working 3 jobs total until graduation, the resumes I wrote weren’t much of quality as I thought it did. Engaging with the job description by putting yourself out there in your experience related to it as well as proper organization in structuring your talking points were done very lazily on my part as I looked back. I even skipped giving in a cover letter with the resume. When I was finishing up my final draft, these flaws were what I mostly looked over to get right as a mechanical engineering job application that I want to work in the future for and I believe I did pretty good on that front.

What followed as the next assignment already proved to be a more engaging class than I could have thought. Doing an interview with a practicing engineer had me really interested as I had already been looking into a first-person point of view in job fields I wanted to work at so I can prepare myself for it early. The most difficult for me was actually looking for a mechanical engineer who was able to sit down and do an interview. I ended up using a site called Reddit where I went into a forum for engineers and asked if anyone was able to do it. I wrote a bit about myself so readers could know where I was coming from as well as how they wanted to do the interview in either video or by simply using a chat room. A man named Andy ended up writing me back a few days later and we did the interview through writing each other back and fourth questions and answers. This went by pretty smoothly as we ended up talking to each other about our interests outside of mechanical engineering such as what our favorite music was. I had no issue writing the report at all, in fact I enjoyed reminiscing on the conversation when I wrote about who he was and how he decided he wanted to be working where he was now.

Stepping aside a bit from the upcoming assignment coming up and looking into writing concise stances on topics was the next teaching point that I found pretty useful as well. Using CCNY’s very own online library in looking up reliable sources of information with proper navigation into looking specifically on the topic you want was a good alternative instead of going straight to Wikipedia sources. Scholarly articles are plentiful as well. APA citation was next when using said info so at the end of your assignment, linking what the sources are is necessary. After some time, properly writing down how the source should be written using APA became second nature. What I felt was the most important teaching point was audience and purpose because this is what ultimately influences what your writing style will be based off of. Making your thesis clear and talking points descriptive for a specific group of readers are what should always be on your outline and be a mainstay all the way till your final draft.

Making a lab report was next on the assignment list and I was pretty familiar with doing one just as I was with resumes. What I just got finished learning about related pretty close to this assignment as writing about the probability of rolling dice required knowing all of the aforementioned info when making the paper. Bringing in data on probability as well as dice for the reader to get to know the background gist and following up with your main purpose is a great transition. After I obtained all of the data on the results of the fallen dice side, the rest of the paper went on smoothly as the graphs, closing statements and sources only needed to come after. Nothing groundbreaking to note here really but I still appreciate a resurgence of this type of paper for the future of my science courses where writing lab reports are necessary.

Moving back to the social aspect of tasks came the group proposal. Selecting classmates to work with as a group and then deciding on a CCNY related problem was really enjoyable to do. As we unanimously agreed that bathrooms were an issue, we split up on decided roles to take care of and fill them in on a shared Google Docs page. I decided to take charge in writing the background info to get the reader up to speed on what plagues the overall problem to form and why this matters in the long run of things. I made sure to make it as friendly as possible by giving rhetorical questions and situations without sacrificing details in order to make our paper really interesting even at a glance. When the deadline came, all of what we had wrote on Google Docs was laid the way it was intended to be with our communication on what to put on the paper was done every time we met. I even double checked the assignment to make sure everything was as perfect and organized as I could make it. When the following day came, we had done presentations to the class on our set proposal. I was the one to introduce the topic to the class and had no trouble doing so as the chemistry between us showed to not be a problem at all as we just bounced of off our roles smoothly.

Before the final assignment came, a few class periods were held in order to review proper use of grammar and spelling. This was done in few class intervals before but full attention of them was now being presented. Spelling for me was never an issue but for the other students who did struggle with it was great for them to get right especially in papers. Understanding how grammar works in sentences such as placing quotes where they need to be as well as punctuation are always a necessity that should really be second nature by now but a review is always welcome. Spring break proved to also be a great opportunity to do a mini extra-credit assignment where I attended the Bronx Zoo that I haven’t gone to in a few years. I enjoyed coming back as I just got reminded of my earlier years going there when I was in grade school seeing not much has changed in terms of the exhibitions and overall layout that kept the zoo authentic to what it was.

To close out the semester revolved back to our engineering major where each of us chose a topic related to it and described how it works. Having a personal interest in cars as well as a relevant piece of technology that is becoming influential over the years turned into my decision to write about the Tesla Model S. I already knew most of what it was since this was a future driving force for the automobile industry I wanted to work for but making my own description of it for a class presentation seemed appealing to do. This wasn’t really lengthy as a full on research paper were to be but I liked it anyway as it left no real room for error. Making information on the topic easy on the reader to understand wasn’t a problem for me to do. I gave the main highlight points for why the Tesla Model S is designed the way it is with two relevant pictures on how it looks like. In the end, I enjoyed this as the closure to all of the semester as it didn’t lend to writing multiple pages for a topic but still was interesting nonetheless.

To reiterate my overall feelings on what I felt as the student for the spring semester course would be nothing but positive remarks. The topics of both English and engineering were incorporated nicely for how our future as engineers depends on writing just as well as mathematics and science do. I felt like none of the assignments were a waste of time and will the time that I got by being in this class will be used when considering the amount of projects I potentially will have in the future. Considering this will be the last fully focused English class I will have for the rest of my major, I will take what I learned in writing and mix it in with my research for the assessments to be the best quality there can be.