This semester in my Writing for Engineers class, we had an excessive amount of work due weekly and were responsible for numerous assignments. Despite this sounding like a negative, it was in fact a significant positive for my academic career. I had the opportunity to be taught by one of the knowledgeable professors in all of CCNY and was assigned many papers that would soon prove to be resourceful in the future. During my 4 months in class, we mainly focused on projects by ourselves and in groups, while still dedicating useful time in class to enhance our writing skills through grammar and sentence structures. I had the privilege to work on papers that would improve my writing immensely and better prepare me for the future both in and outside of school.

One of the most useful things I learned in my Writing for Engineers class was how to properly write a resume. Writing my resume was one of the most difficult assignments for me this whole semester because it challenged me to brainstorm as many positive characteristics and skills that I excel in. In addition, my resume also needed to include a culmination of all my experience throughout my life and a brief overview of my academic level through GPAs, awards and acknowledgements, and previous course history throughout high school and college. When constructing the resume, I had to make sure I included as many details in the skills section of the paper because it can increase my chances of gaining the interest of the employer. In addition, in my experience portion of the paper, I had to be as specific as possible when giving my location and duration of time working or attending school. This was my first time creating my own resume, so I did lack knowledge in what was required of me to write in this resume prior to the assignment. However, after learning the information that belongs in a resume, I feel like my resume has sufficient information about me that would satisfy the audience, or in this case the employer who is reviewing my resume. Lastly, the final concept I had to take into account when writing my resume was the purpose. Through the resume and my cover letter, I made sure to make it clear to the audience that my intention for writing a resume was to intrigue the employer and convince him into hiring me for a certain position.

I had the privilege to interview an individual who is currently employed and working a job in the same field of study that I am currently majoring in. I interviewed Mr. Daniel Carrozzi because he was one of the closest individuals to my age, who majored in Electrical engineering and is now working full time as a Building and Systems Engineer specialist. I personally believe this was the most useful of all the assignments because through this interview, I was able to expand my knowledge of what is expected in the future and made the requirements needed to succeed in a job apparent to me. From consulting with this individual, I was informed of how my schedule would be daily from the number of hours I would work to what I’d be doing at different parts of the day. Throughout the interview, I was engaged with his attitude which depicted how truly interested and devoted he was to his job. Mr. Carrozzi gladly answered all my questions involving his position, starting salaries, a description of the work environment, how often he spends working with on hand activities daily, and kindly answered my personal questions like his inspirations to becoming an engineer and recalled his experiences in conferences and meetings, and whether he enjoyed his current occupation or not. I was notified about the various interactions I’d have with coworkers throughout the day, such as presentations of my discoveries and numerous evaluations of my work and how efficiently I was able to formulate different gadgets I would need to work with. I was told in what ways I would incorporate my writing skills into my future career job, through taking notes of other people’s work to enhance my knowledge of the devices I would be working with. From this, I was able to take vivid notes about all the important points he reminded me to keep in mind during my first few days at the job. After conducting this interview, I was able to learn about the life of an Electrical engineer working a full time job for a multi-millionaire company. I felt this assignment better prepared me for a future job in my current field and enabled me to create a clearer visual of what would be expected of me on a typical day at work.

The lab report was, in my opinion the longest of all the assignments this semester for my Writing for Engineers class. In this assignment, I constructed an entire report about any 1 question of my choosing, however, the question had to be based on the simple experiment of rolling a pair of dice. One of the most irritating parts of this experiment was repeating the procedure of rolling a pair of dice 100 times, which ended up being very time consuming. Prior to producing a question and hypothesis, I had to conduct my own research of the history of dice and how it plays a key role in our academics in the present day. After obtaining the background information, I was then able to produce a question of “What were the chances of the sum of the 2 die being rolled being greater than 6?” I tried to create a reasonable question for me to answer based off the procedure of rolling the dice in order to limit the percentage of error that could occur. While conducting the procedure, I recorded all my data onto a table plotted this data onto both a bar and a pie graph. I created a table to clearly show my data using Excel in order to show my different trials. I chose to use a bar and pie graph because those graphs were the easiest ways to show my data and depict the large margin between the sum of the die which rolled between being less than 6 and the sum of the die rolled being greater than 6. From my data, I concluded that my hypothesis was correct meaning there was a greater chance of the sum of the die rolled being a sum greater than 6. I think my least favorite part of this assignment was incorporating an example of information literacy in order to synthesize my results with another dice probability study. Using the CCNY online library website, I researched and read various scholarly articles on dice probability and found an article that calculated the probability distribution of the sum of k dice for (k >3). It was the most challenging part of this assignment because unlike my lab report, the lab report I researched had derived a function of the sum x through the equation f(x)= ⅙ with x ranging between one and six for the number rolled on each die. Lastly, I felt the calculations were the trickiest part of this assignment because of how easy it was to make a mistake when converting my data into percentage, which could have led to more errors in the results.

For my group proposal, me and 3 other students brainstormed a variety of reasonable and logical ways in which we could renovate our college and transform it into a more modern day and academic friendly environment for all the students. As a member of the Updog group, we focused on the significance of adding a greater quantity of drinking fountains to the NAC building at the City College of New York. Through our proposal and presentation, I found it interesting to research all the various factors that must be taken into account when introducing just one drinking fountain into an academic building, like the NAC. In addition, I also found it important to know the costs of installing a water fountain because I am an active user of drinking fountains all throughout the NAC. Through my research, I analyzed multiple statistics involving different costs of not just drinking fountains, but other types of fountains too using various scholarly sources. One of the more important values incorporated when proposing this plan was teamwork. Through this group proposal, my group members and I divided the work evenly, with each member doing their own background research. We then drafted our own work and gave feedback to each other on what we felt we should add and omit from our paragraphs. Lastly, we collaborated at the end to establish one paper that depicted the purpose of our research and how we would achieve it. I enjoyed presenting our proposal to the audience and based on the data we collected and our action plan, I felt this plan can be very achievable in the near future. It was jubilant to learn how us as students of a well established institution like City College were able to develop and brainstorm various ideas in order to make this college a better place for all the students and a way to encourage more people to enroll and finish their academic careers here.

As an electrical engineering student, one vital concept that I should be most familiar with is that of the electric circuit. From the technical description, I was able to research the basics of the circuit such as it’s primary parts, the different types, it’s many uses and how we can apply the function of circuits into our daily lives. In this assignment, I became more familiar with the process of how energy is generated from electrons that travel throughout electrical currents and the factors that play a role in altering how energy is produced. I felt like creating a technical description for circuits proved to be beneficial for me because it enabled me to research information and informed me about various facts about circuits that are crucial for me to know prior to entering a science class that is required of me to take for my major. When creating my technical description, I separated each section into 5 different subheadings, with each part explaining a different characteristic of an electrical circuit. Following my research and interpretation of the information I collected in my own words into 5 concise paragraphs, I cited sources in APA style at the end, however I did forget to put each source in alphabetical order.

Despite the various papers we were assigned throughout the semester, we were still privileged to be able to receive various lectures on grammar and sentence structures. I believe the most confusing part of grammar for me was the lesson on similar words. I feel like I make very silly mistakes in using the wrong words in my sentences and mixing them up with words that are similar but lack the same meaning. On the contrary, I felt like my strengths were with word clarity, active and passive verbs, and fragments. Throughout the semester, I saw an improvement in my run on sentences and my capitalization of the wrong words. I began to improve on these parts of grammar through various in class reflections, informative explanations on when to use capital letters and when not to use them, and the feedback left on my assignments.

From the beginning of the semester to the end of the semester, I saw a great improvement in my work. I think working with my fellow classmates and taking all the feedback I received into account, enabled me to write more informative papers that didn’t lack as much detail and had little to no grammatical mistakes. My favorite assignment this whole semester had to have been the resume because it was something I was very unfamiliar with writing, but highly significant when applying for a full time job after my academic career is over. My least favorite of the assignments had to have been the lab report because of the additional research that was required in addition to the synthesis of two different sets of data and the many calculations and visuals that needed to be present. I can say I learned many valuable facts and information through all the assignments and it’s definitely going to be vital for me to utilize what I have learned in the following next semester.