Shageldi Gaylyyev

When Hard Work Becomes Fun:

My Experience in Writing for Engineering Class

        First day of the class, I was feeling sorry to take another English class after couple English classes. The professor does not look like any other English professors I have seen. He looks so serious. I had a feeling that this class would be boring as my previous classes. However, after 15 minutes, I have realized that the professor is so fun to talk. His jokes are simple and very funny. In this class, I had many assignments to complete, but all of them were fun.

The first simple assignment was to write an intro about yourself. It was an easy assignment to start with since there was not required word quantity. The most enjoyable part was I could read any of my classmate’s bio and learn about them in detail. This helped me to start a conversation with them in class.

The second assignment, resume, was not fun as the first assignment, but it was most important one. Challenging part was students were not required to bring only resume, but I we had to find a real job posting and we had to prepare cover letter as if we are applying to that job. This assignment really prepared us for future life since we will do it at some point in our life. It was great experience.

The third assignment was to find an engineer who is currently working in the field and interview him/her. No doubt that finding an engineer was the most challenging part of the whole course especially when you have no connections. I had a friend who I met in his last semester. He is so nice person. At least I thought that way. He was the only one who I knew in my field. I emailed him asking how he is doing in his new job. He replied in 24 hours thanking me. Then, I kindly requested doing informational interview with him and I did not get a replay at all. That was a test of friendship with that man and me and it is failed. As it is often said, “Friend in need is friend in deed.” Finally, I found someone and interviewed him. In short, it was amazing. I have learned many things that I do not know and some things that I thought not important were very important.

Lab report was fourth assignment which was about probability. It is the topic that I was so interested in. I always wondered if probability in math works in real life. Surprisingly, my results were almost as expected. Usually, the results are not going to be as theory predicts since the number of trials are limited. Another good thing that I have learned in this assignment is how to do academic research. Then this was the first assignment that I have used APA citation. It was little hard since I used to cite in MLA.

Among all assignments proposal project was one of the challenging projects since I had to work with other people. I am glad that I had hardworking and responsible group members. First lesson that I have learned in this project is that the project is huge and there are a lot of things to research about, but it is important to keep it simple which is reading only important and useful data. The second important lesson was that any group needs a leader which will give final decisions. By doing this project I have learned how to work with other people and do pear reviewing.

Last but not least, technical description assignment was one of the most fun assignments I have ever done in my life. Starting from my childhood, my passion learning about flight is almost fulfilled by this project. I have never thought of trying physics rules for flight on a paper airplane until this project. It is simple, yet amazing to see that same rules for actual airplane can be applied to a paper airplane. I have read many sources to fully understand how airplanes fly. Some of the information that I gathered was highly advanced for my classmates. Therefore, I kept it as simple as I can for my audience. To help my audience visualize and understand better, I prepared a power point.  Additionally, I have learned much information about different fields because of this project.

In a nutshell, in this class I had so much fun although I had to work hard to do all the assignments. I think the professor did a great job teaching this course. My classmates were also fun to talk to. I think my writing, reading and speaking is improved after taking this course. I have no regrets taking this class.