This semester in Writing for Sciences I completed numerous writing assignments that included actual processes. As I am a strong writer and extremely rehearsed researcher, a lot of the assignments came in ease as I was already accustomed to these processes from previous experience. We didn’t just need to write the assignment and hand it in, but we were introduced to an entire process within the writing process itself by pre-writing exercises. However, certain aspects of the stages seemed unnecessary and helpful to me, but that is particularly due to my previous experiences acting like those “previous stages” in the working process. 

Firstly, I thought formulating an outline for the technical memo was extremely important and helpful since it gave me a better understanding of what exactly I have to write. Additionally, the audience and issue research completely helped me write my paper as that early stage of identifying the audience, and addressing all the points in the issue itself were again restated in the actual report. 

Specifically this semester in Writing for Sciences, I completed numerous writing assignments that included actual processes. As I am a strong writer and extremely rehearsed researcher, a lot of the assignments came in ease as I was already accustomed to these processes from previous experience. We didn’t just need to write the assignment and hand it in, but we were introduced to an entire process within the writing process itself by pre-writing exercises. However, certain aspects of the stages seemed unnecessary and helpful to me, but that is particularly due to my previous experiences acting like those “previous stages” in the working process. 

Firstly, I thought formulating an outline for the technical memo was extremely important and helpful since it gave me a better understanding of what exactly I have to write. The individual categories of more additional information and subtopics in that outline helped me delve deeper into my topic. Additionally, the audience and issue research completely helped me write my paper as that early stage of identifying the audience, and addressing all the points in the issue itself were again restated in the actual report. I had written a majority of my paper there with lots of sources so I could just add that directly into my paper in the section that best fits. In general the drafts for both the op-ed and technical memo were extremely important to be in order to figure out how to best format it. I usually had all the content present in there, but the formatting would be a bit off based on the given guidelines. The op-ed and technical memo were extremely informative to write and I learned a lot about writing these specific types of pieces. I haven’t ever written an op-ed or a report like the technical memo, so I enjoyed learning how to write a new type of genre. I also really liked exploring a different genre of an op-ed and tech memo to convey a similar message to a different audience. For my op-ed advanced contract genre I chose a subway poster in Spanish and this helped me acknowledge the NYC population who is significantly Spanish-speaking and an easy way to showcase a message is with a poster. I chose to write another op-ed for my advanced contract for the technical memo because I enjoyed doing so for the first assignment and thought that my issue that I chose about poor housing conditions could be more readily accessible to people via a news op-ed style. 

There were various assignments that weren’t very helpful for me specifically. For example, the reverse outline for our model op-ed article wasn’t very helpful to me because I ended up not looking back at it while writing my own paper. Op-ed follow very different structures depending on the issues you are discussing and I believe that the structure and outline are on a case-by-case matter. That being said, that is a great introduction for people who have never read an op-ed before, or don’t even know what it is. Additionally, the invention exercises that we had to pick our topics for the op-ed and the technical memo, in my opinion, weren’t really helpful, but I ended up choosing a topic upon receiving the assignment without having to go through the process of researching it earlier. I put down the topic that I chose in my head on the invention list, and I knew which one I was going to write about regardless of the exercise. That assignment, for me particularly, was not helpful because I already knew what topic I chose, and had to come up with random ones to fill in for the assignment. Though, the only benefit I received from this process was early research for the actual written assignment. For example, for the op-ed assignment, the invention activity included free writing on multiple topics; however, I had already chosen a topic and started my preliminary research, so researching other topics for the assignment wasn’t really helpful other than the fact that I gained more knowledge on them as a whole. Additionally, the peer reviews for me were a great way for critiques on your writing; however, I think the majority of us did that assignment for the sake of doing it quickly – thus I didn’t receive that well of comments on my pieces other than the fact that I did well. I would’ve wished for more critical analysis in the peer reviews from my peers. 

Overall, I learned a lot about writing and a lot about the topics that I enjoy writing about in this class.