A journey:
Writing is a powerful weapon
What is a student? A person who is studying at an institute on a certain subject or maybe someone who takes every life experiences as a part of learning. For me, the wisdom that I have been receiving from The City College of New York plays a major part in culturing my knowledge. I didn’t think for an engineer writing would be an important concern, which I acknowledge how crucial it is while taking this Writing for Engineers course.
The program helped me how to write in a profound way before I elaborate more. I am Shakawat Hossain, a Mechanical Engineer student at CCNY hoping to graduate by 2022. As a mathematically minded person, the writing was somewhat troublesome for me. Discovering a mathematical formula in writing was something I thrived. Eventually, I realized it’s the same as math in one perspective that the more you write the better you get. In this class, we had seven writing assignments along with three presentations each having a deadline, maintained them because of our enthusiastic professor.
The assignments consist of a Resume with a Cover letter, an experimental Lab Report, a teamed up Request for proposal, an Interview Report and lastly a Technical Description. It started with the resume and cover letter writing either was easy. The only hurdle was to find a legit company who’s providing an internship and writing a cover letter based on that. The next thing was the Interview Report for which I had to interview a professional form my major, which was hard to find. But, with the interview, I learned how important it is to develop a connection in someone’s career.
The experiment was to roll a pair of dice 100 times and come up with a conclusion about their probable sum. For this, I manually rolled the dice and recorded the outcome. Inputted the results in Excel to produce a graph and an equation and for me, six was the most probable sum. Although from my sources seven was their probable and most mathematically correct answer. This was an example that engineers might have tasks to write Lab Reports in their jobs. We engineers possibly would also work in groups.
The Request for proposal was a good example of Collaboration. For this assignment, I was in a group of four, two of them were computer geeks, a civil and me a mechanical engineer. I proposed that we should re-innovated the swimming pool we have on the campus. The group agreed upon that and appointed a time to go visit the pool. The vicinity was guided to us by the contractor with whom we had a great conversation who gave us all the knowledge to construct a pool. Dividing the writing, PowerPoint presentation and research for the project made everything finish with ease. This particular project was pleasant, learned how to work as a group, understood that field work can be a thing as an engineer. Indeed every engineer has their own field of work, where this next Technical Description assignment comes in. As for me, I want to pursue my graduates’ degree in aerospace engineering, I chose to write about commercial jet engines. This drill was interesting as we are told to add pictures and condense information based on the importance. The hunt for information increased my passion to study aerospace.
Throughout the course, I was always reminded of the Audience and Purpose (A&P) which matters a lot in writing. For example, I cannot write an e-mail the way I would write to my friend. All the Information Literacy were to be done on the college’s library but for me, it did not help. I rarely found any acceptable material in cuny’s online library. Nevertheless, the information I found on the internet, proper Citation of the source is imperative to avoid plagiarism. Every piece of writing is based on a lot of Reading and also the Synthesis of information read, which I did the best of my abilities.
The writing was something I feared, but with this class, I understood the conceptual part of writing. If I know what am doing it is easy to put my thoughts into words. The way I write now, I elaborate my thoughts in details so that I not only can write more but also the reader gets all the vital information. Writing is a powerful weapon as everyone says, and it’s true. It is also an essential part of everyone’s life. The class educated me a lot about the writing I have to face in the real work world.
