Writing is an art form that spans many mediums. For me, however, writing has always been a form of work. It’s been over a decade since I last used writing as a form of expression. I simply used it to express my research or to communicate facts. However, writing is so much more than that, but that translation had been erased from my understand for quite some time. Over the course of the Spring 2024 semester, I was reintroduced to writing and the different forms it takes.

                  Relearning how to express anything other than concrete facts and research was not easy. I often found myself struggling to allow my biases and opinions to be typed out onto a screen. I first realized my struggle with this while writing the position’s paper. After writing that assignment I was surprised at how unfamiliar I was with writing a positions paper to the government that addressed funding an idea. Another writing style I struggled with was descriptive writing during the technical description paper. To go into detail about the individual parts of the device was quite challenging because the French press seems simple to use and being descriptive of such miniscule parts was not second nature to me. I use the French press often and never really thought about the mechanics of the device or how its assembly allows for proper coffee brewing. It forced me to reflect on how that is an area of writing I lack in and need to work on bettering.

                  I’ve always found that reading articles and doing research on the topic is something I am very comfortable doing for any sort of paper. As the semester progressed, I navigated well in finding sources on the different range of topics introduced. I have always been quite familiar with using databases for my research in the past, so I resorted to using familiar databases, an example being the Elsevier- Science Direct database. I am familiar with citing and creating reference pages, but I forgot many minor details about the process and the assignments in this class allowed me to relearn the entire process.

                  A very helpful strategy that helped me during these assignments was the peer-reviewing that took place. It can often be difficult to catch mistakes in your own writing, especially when you’re rereading the same content. The chance to have a fresh pair of eyes look at your writing and catch minor mistakes you missed is very helpful in the long run. They also provide you with their unique understanding of your work so that you can better your writing and mold it into something a bigger audience can appreciate.

                  For the PSA assignment my group members and I based our assignment on The Nature Conservancy. For that assignment we each focused on our own individual slide while also giving each other feedback and our honest input so that we were all content with the result. I was very appreciative to have been in my group, we each got along very well, and each contributed our all to our assignments. The technical innovation project was also an enjoyable project in that we were able to explore areas of environmental conflict that interest us, and we were able to use our imaginations and ideas to put together an innovation. Having the opportunity to break into groups and brainstorm together our meat cultivation idea was crucial in creating the innovation. For designing the presentation and organizing the paper we all worked collectively to find a layout that aligned with our vision of the project. We went over the grammar and writing of the presentation and paper to ensure that there were no mistakes while properly including citations for information we obtained from other sources and images or diagrams that we referenced. I am certain that after our groupwork the four us are leaving the class having become better writers.

                  I believe that my theory of writing has shifted after taking this course. I no longer see writing as a simple means of communicating research but a vast and complex form of expressing anything you can put into words. I leave with ambition to better myself as a writer, knowing that I still have much work to put into my descriptive writing and I am certain all these assignments have helped me in my future career as an environmental engineer. It was not until this class that I realized that writing, just like math and physics is crucial to the engineering world. It’s everywhere and often taken for granted but has now become something I’ve learned to appreciate.