The Writing for Engineering course has helped me improve my English skills and my studying habits. I initially took this class because it was part of my Computer Science major. I didn’t think I would need it very much as I already had good English reading and writing skills. However, I realized quickly that I did not know how to use my English skills as an engineer. This course has helped me apply my English skills in a more technical setting.

My writing process before I came to this class was pretty good, I’d say. It was mostly defined by my Freshman Composition course. I knew how to frame a thesis statement and how to write and support a thesis statement. I knew the rules of citation and how to properly cite and paraphrase my sources. The consequences of plagiarism were also something I was made aware of. I also knew about using different resources for my research including the college library, both in-person and online, and Google Scholar. However, I didn’t know about EBSCO and all the resources that I had access to before I took this class.

Another aspect that I really enjoyed about this course was the groupwork. Writing an essay by yourself and writing it as part of a team are very different endeavors. First of all, different people have different writing styles. It sounds obvious but when trying to a coherent essay with a clear thesis and goal, it becomes more apparent. It was interesting to navigate and helped me learn more on different people’s writing skills. It also built my teamwork capabilities.

Another thing that I struggled and learned throughout the semester was formulating and taking a stance in my thesis statement. Being an indecisive person, my writing style is often very unfocused and lacking a clear message. Choosing a topic to write an essay on is the hardest step of the process for me. After that, writing the introduction is the next hardest step. This semester I tried experimenting with some tactics to help tackle that. One of those was writing the body of my essay first. Then I go back and write an intro that feels appropriate to the topic at hand. I also did the same with my thesis statement, only writing it after I knew what I wanted to say in the essay.

My most difficult challenge in this semester was time-management. I felt like there many assignments that I knew how to do but either didn’t do or submitted late because of poor time management. Time-management has always been an issue for me. This semester I was diagnosed with ADHD so that does explain some of my issues. That combined with some bad habits I had developed in the last few years caused some serious problems in all my courses this semester. Thankfully, all my professors and instructors were quite understanding and I was also able to get an accommodation with the AccessAbility office. However, at the end of the day, the responsibility for managing my time fell on me. One of the tactics that I used to do my work is take a walk or do some exercise before working as that gave me a mood boost. Stretching and yoga also helped in this regard.

I have already started implementing the ideas I learned in this class to other classes. Groupwork is one of the most important skills I learned in this class. I applied my teamwork skills while doing group projects in other classes this semester and I plan to keep using those moving forward. I also plan to use the different resources that I learned from this class like the Language Center and EBSCO databases for my future classes. Finally, and most importantly, I am going to use the time-management skills I learned here in my academic and personal life.