Week 2:

This week I learned a lot about myself through the Letter of Introduction which was an assignment where I had to speak about myself and connect it with my goals and aspirations in the engineering field. I went into depth on things that before I never really spoke about such as my aunt. Her influence on me and the choices I have made in my life so far connected to engineering. Being able to express myself helped me find different words and increase my vocabulary to describe my emotions and thoughts. Also being able to point out what I believed to be my weaknesses and strengths and comparing them to my classmates helped me look to make new connections.

Week 3:

This week there were a lot of thoughts flowing through my head with the Product Review assignment as I had never really made an outline and used it to create my first draft. As I created my first draft I saw many flaws and had to produce a second draft in order to create what I believed would be my best draft. I later found out that my draft had not been in line with the outline and still had many more flaws as I worked with my peers to review each others work and put our own opinions on the work. This week taught me that peer review is very helpful as others may view certain aspects of your work as difficult to understand as they are the first readers. It can also help make sure that you are in the right path to create the best piece of work possible.

Week 4:

Looking at Lab Reports this entire week to find exactly what I wanted to focus on for my Lab Report Analysis was very time consuming as I had to read many lab reports to find the reports that fit my topic. This process taught me how to be patient when it came to research and how informational lab reports are. This also taught me what an ideal lab report should look like as we went over one in class. Breaking down the lab report in class was great as I would have to do that to my chosen lab reports later on. I also learned how to work with a group in order to break down parts of a lab report and how informative your classmates can be as they can understand something that I might not.

Week 5:

This week we looked at the importance on formatting and how can this can help improve my paper. There was a lot of editing for my Product Review Essay due to the bad formatting. I never really did APA format before this class. APA was very different from what I was used to and I had to figure out how to format my paper using APA. My classmates provided assistance on formatting and so did my professor. After revising and editing three times I believed that I mastered the APA format for this paper.

Week 6:

The Lab Report Analysis was what primarily had my attention this entire week as I just finished writing my best draft and I was only trying to find ways to improve it. I read my best draft at least five times aloud to see if the writing flowed. Every time I would read it there was at least two changes I made. I learned that this was the best method to revise my work. I would find spelling and grammatical errors as well as finding areas where I could improve my transitions. The Technical Description was on my mind more to the end of the week and I believe that I want to do a Remote Control Car.

Week 7:

Going into this week I had a very unclear definition of what technical writing and a technical description was. After reading the article assigned I got a better understanding of what I would have to do for my Technical Description. Research has always been something that I could do with ease. Reading the second article that was assigned broadened my understanding of what research should look like and consist. Going into further depth on articles to get a better idea of the topic I was researching was the key information I received. I learned to not overlook the small details and to look into those small details further as they contain very valuable information.

Week 8:

Whenever I look into a manual to build any sort of item I always see pictures with descriptive words. The importance of these pictures and those descriptive words was the main focus of this weeks class. I always found that a manual with pictures is more helpful than one without. This is proven in the articles that were assigned for this week. I learned how to include these pictures in my technical writing as well as where to place them and in what order. I can not have pictures of different parts next to each other because I should break down each part into sub parts first. Before this week I had the parts next to each other instead of separating and breaking them down into subparts.

Week 9:

This week was the start of the collaborative project of a technical innovation. Breaking apart from my typical peer review group was the first step which was difficult as I spent most of the time in class discussing my work with them. I came up with the idea of a magnetic ratchet which would be very helpful for anyone who works in the automotive industry. This week felt like an expo where engineers and inventors bring out their ideas as everyone had different innovations they wanted to work on. I learned to expand my thoughts to see the world as others see it, both in writing and problem solving. I was also focused on the technical description which was also a large assignment. My ability of multi tasking was definitely being tested as well as improved.

Week 10:

The technical description was the main focus for me this week as I needed to peer review with my group as well as revise and edit the technical description on my own accord. The most useful thing about peer review is seeing what ideas others in my group had that I could include in my own work as well as what improvements they can make that I had in my technical description. Peer review in my group is mainly explaining why each of us has different components that others can include in their work or why a certain component may not work for the assignment at hand. There are many times in peer review where my classmates see flaws in my work and there is nothing better than having someone who is going through the struggle as well help you with your work. The second part of the week was the collaborative assignment and finding a common ground with all my group members of the work distribution and the innovation as a whole. Learning how to compromise and expand from what I am used to was the main takeaway of this session.

Week 11:

Presenting in front of a group is always difficult especially when presenting an original innovation. Going over the assigned articles of presentations was helpful as I could learn different methods of getting my ideas heard. In all presentations I learned that I have to be clear and confident. The presentation with my group for the innovation assignment was looking to take shape. I continued to revise and edit my work as well as my group members work. Talking about the best ways to get our innovation out to the class was the main focus of the group meeting and we were able to set an understanding of what each group member needed to do.

Week 13:

This week my team members and I worked heavily together on the collaborative innovation. This experience taught me how to work in a group that had very different schedules. Meeting was not easy but we were able to find a good time to all put our input on each others work. I never believed that putting different thoughts into a common idea would work as well as it did. Each one of us brought new innovations into the main innovation and I believe for now on that is how I will work on collaborative projects.

Week 14:

Throughout this entire course I have had to focus on my portfolio so this week I had to think overall on what I wanted to include in my portfolio. In order to process what I wanted to put into my portfolio I went over all my weekly reflections and read what most impacted me. Each of these weekly reflections has different assignments that influenced me as a writer. The portfolio spreadsheet helped me remember how much of an impact each assignment had on me and how I advanced as a writer.