Before I took ‘Writing for Engineering,’ I came from a FIQWS history course, which combined both writing and a comprehension component. I believe I finished with a B+ in the comprehension portion, and a C+ in the writing course, indicating that I need to improve my writing skills (maybe). It was not only writing skills that I needed to improve, but meeting the deadline on assignments was something I lacked, very much. Since it was my first semester in college, I came in with my highschool mindset of turning half-assed, late assignments for credit (My school was chill like that). Surprisingly, it worked,  I managed to pass with a more than average grade for work that would DEFINITELY NOT slide in college (maybe). I was not  tested, nor pushed to my best; In reality, I was pushed to confort, when it should be the opposite. This, however, does not excuse my C+ in the writing course. I could’ve confidently gotten a B+ or higher if I TURNED THE ASSIGNMENTS ON TIME. I missed so many deadlines, and did not care because I thought my professors were like my highschool teachers (they were not), and would accept my late work, regardless of the matter, they did not. 

Despite these setbacks, my writing process did not improve as much from highschool to first semester college. I did not care about editing or revising; once the paper was done in my eyes, it was over, no looking back. We also had peer review sessions and time to create drafts, but I did not care for those and ended up using my draft as the finished product. All because I thought my writing was ‘perfect’; Oh was I wrong. Going into my second semester of College, I had the class ‘writing for engineering’. A class essentially made to improve my writing in a more sophisticated way like an engineer would do when writing a manual of sorts. But this time around, I had a different approach to this class; I needed to learn, and from reading the syllabus, it was clear that the professor did not play with deadlines. I had to drop my old habits and adapt to new, better habits in order to improve my voice as a writer. Also, because I do not like writing classes, which gave me extra motivation to get past this class and not retake it.

The first assignment of this class was the Lab report (we had discussion posts too but I would not count those). Overall the hardest part of this assignment was looking for an experiment I enjoyed. I lean more towards chemical engineering, but finding an experiment for that was scarce. Until I found an experiment about a water powered car is when I began to find chemistry+engineering interesting. When completed (this time around), I made sure to edit my paper, check for some grammatical errors, redundancy errors, and go over the requirements (Better than last semester). Moving on to the technical description project is when we had more flexibility in the assignment, and I consider it the most ‘fun’ assignment but also the most challenging. It had the most requirements and word count, including photos and descriptions (that was difficult with docs). When completed, I felt relieved and revised it like my Lab report. Finally came the Presentation. I have to admit that I do not like presentations; I get stage fright and have not done much in the past to improve. Plus, it was a group presentation, a first in awhile. Communication was key to this project and is also the assignment where I learned the most; I learned how to communicate, improve my presentation skills, and get practice for presentations that I will most definitely use as an engineering student in the coming years. This class has taught me so much in so little time, which I will take advantage of for