When I sign up for elective courses, I try to choose classes that differ from my pre-law courses, but could still benefit me in real-world settings. That being said, I signed up for technical writing knowing that it is an excellent skill to have in the legal field, but I still was not 100% sure of what to expect in the class. In my academic career so far, I have grown pretty comfortable with research papers and lengthy essays, so technical writing has been a fresh perspective on writing for me. Although it was intimidating for the first week or so, I have really enjoyed learning about the importance and non-linear methods of technical communication.

I am a little biased because it is my favorite course this semester, but I really do appreciate the points system of the course. Because we receive points based on our effort and work we put into the course, I feel comfortable venturing out of my comfort zone and trying new multimodal things on our major projects because if my new strategies fail, I can always make up the points. Without the system, I feel like I would definitely “play it safe” more on assignments and miss out on some of the most interesting aspects of technical communication. So far, I have really liked completing the reading annotations. At the beginning of the units, I read the articles as individual readings, but as I begin annotating, I gain a greater insight on the non-linear connections between the assignments. I also love how the reading annotations allow us to make connections to issues outside of class, such as “wicked problems.”

In my first two annotations, I lost points for not including different modes in my article notes. I also wrote those annotations while subconsciously viewing myself as both the author and the audience, most likely because most annotations I had done before the class were simple personal notes. For annotations three and four, I constructed an imaginary audience of my peers. In doing so, my annotations were more catered to providing supplemental information and connections that would be helpful for peers reading the articles. Instead of using sources to base my annotations off of and then referencing the sources, I added websites and infographics to my annotations after I had written them, that way they would supplement my own ideas and provide peers with a “help guide” to the texts.

Going forward in the course, I am looking forward to diving right in to designing the signage for the Our House project. Through the service learning project, I am hoping to learn more about the entire technical writing process in a group setting, as it would reflect real-world work settings. I hope that my group and I can make quality pieces that would look professional enough to be used in my online professional portfolio that we will create later in the semester. I think the professional portfolio could be used after this class as a way to display my breadth of work as I am starting off in the workforce. When we begin working on the portfolios/profiles later in the semester, I would like to learn ways to include other technical work that I have done in jobs outside of school, such as pieces I have written for donors on gift-planning strategies, alongside my academic assignments. Because I would like to put in my best effort in this course, I would also like to complete as many extra credit assignments as I possibly can, in order to get a good grade and to get the most out of what we are learning.