My college writing experience has been fairly technical as an electrical engineering major. My freshman year I took expository writing, which gave me some exposure to more creative writing. I really enjoyed the class because the topic was myth and hero, and I got to write about super heroes for my final paper. I did fairly well in the class, but writing is certainly one of my weaknesses when it comes to grammar and structure. Creativity was never a problem for me though, which made it really fun! Besides expository writing I have written several technical papers in my engineering courses, which I took very seriously because it's so important for my future career. I like technical writing because it's easy to write scientific papers that are very structured, and it's enjoyable to try and convey scientific ideas well! I was also a co-author of a journal article for some undergraduate research I did this past summer. The article was about pattern and polarization agile annular slot antennas. Writing that was a great time to put in the work and discover many interesting things and then collaborate with a graduate student and writing it up! I wish I had taken a class specifically about technical writing. There is a course that many engineers take for a professional elective, but I had already fulfilled that elective requirement so I didn't take it! This class was also a great writing experience for me. I hadn't had any classes that gave me the opportunity to comment on other peoples work, so it was great to be able to do that. I also really enjoyed being able to be so creative with my writing and I had so much fun with the elephant story book. Having the professors detailed feedback was also amazing and really helped refine my writing skills. Overall I'm very pleased with my experience with writing at OU.
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| Typical College Writing Experience |
I'll have to agree with you about technical writing. Writing that is structured makes it very easy to write out what you want to convey. Besides comp 1 and comp 2—if those even count—I've never taken any specific writing courses though I wish I had. The ability to write is something that would have greatly helped me when I wrote essays for research programs and was applying to places that required essay answers to questions. I wouldn't say I'm bad at writing but a few courses I feel would have helped me in the long run.
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