My name is Mark Kim, and I am currently a sophomore at the City College of New York. I am currently a computer science major and am studying software development. I am generally a timid person and therefore have a lot of trouble getting my point across. My writings tend to be very redundant and stray from the main point. Sometimes I can even change the complete tone of the assignment or writing in question. I struggled a lot throughout this semester and have struggled in other writing classes, however, there were many experiences throughout the class that developed my skills as a writer.
Throughout the whole semester, almost all of our assignments went under a peer review process. The peer review of my Technical Description draft from Jean Carlo was very helpful. He was able to pinpoint that the tone of my essay was not what the assignment was asking for. The assignment was asking for an objective stance, and I had made parts of my essay sound as if I was selling the product to the reader as opposed to describing the parts and subparts of the product to an audience that does not know anything about the product. Jean Carlo also helped me label my figures properly and clearly and reminded me to include my citations. This enhanced my revising, editing, and self-assessment abilities and now I know what I should be looking for while reviewing my work. I was also able to develop and engage in a collaborative process through this peer review process with Jean Carlo.
The Product Review Essay was an assignment where we had to discuss a product where we had to go into the engineering and innovation behind the product. In my case I learned how to go in depth about the innovation that goes into a television and state that stance clearly and objectively. I engaged in genre analysis to compose effective writing across disciplinary contexts and beyond. This was one of the first assignments of the semester and I had always struggled writing in an objective stance, but this assignment necessitated an objective stance. I focused on the innovation of my product I was writing about instead of trying to promote it.
The Technical Description helped me break apart a product and examine the various parts and subparts that make up said product. I was able to formulate and articulate a stance throughout my writing. Formulating my stance throughout this writing helped me stay on task and be consistent with the tone of the assignment which was to describe and not to sell a product that we were breaking down. I was at first writing as if I was advertising it to the world but now, I understand how to write about describing it to the world.
The Proposal and Presentation taught me how to write about potential business pitches that I might need to make in the future. Business pitches is not a form of writing that is practiced much in college and barely practiced before college and this proposal writing and presentation helped with that. Knowing what to mention in an investment pitch is easy but putting it in a concise and interesting way is the hardest part. Writing paragraphs in presentations is something that I learned throughout my presentation and was a horrible way to get the pitch across. It shows that you are not confident in yourself to speak and shows that you don’t know much about your own product. Writing in a concise manner is an invaluable skill that I learned because of how it looks professional to others and makes it easier for others to follow along during the presentation. The proposal and presentation allowed me to develop my collaborative and social aspect of the writing process by working with seven other people virtually. I also was able to engage in genre analysis to compose effective writing across disciplinary contexts and beyond. As stated before, I had no direction with how to address a group of angel investors and this assignment gave me a better idea of what goes into a product presentation to make it more compelling than others.
The first assignment of the semester, Letter of Introduction, made me realize that I was not a very creative person, nor did I really have an aim in life. I knew I was a Computer Science major but did not know what I really wanted to do and pursue in my life after college. The letter of introduction allowed me to reflect on what I wanted to do in the future and made me do my research on potential jobs with this degree or maybe something else I can add on to pursue my dreams of the development of artificial intelligence in the medical field. I was able to negotiate my own writing goals regarding the genre of writing, in this case, a letter.
In conclusion, I have learned a lot throughout this semester despite my poor performance on some assignments. I was able to develop some more creativity and even more important, I was able to understand what it is that I wanted to do with my future. The Letter of Introduction indirectly showed that I wanted to pursue a career in developing artificial intelligence to better help the medical field. Also, the class developed my researching, collaborative, and editing skills when it comes to my writing.
