Executive Summary

This page is a compilation of two works completed during my English 2100 Technical Writing course. Both of these projects were designed and completed with the intent to be implemented in real world scenarios.

• A technical journal article on the sustainability of the batteries used by the Electric Vehicle industry. I hope to publish this article in an industry periodical or other collection where it will be read by policymakers. 

• A web design employment portfolio that highlights projects that I have completed. This document is intended to be a resume supplement that I will include as part of an employment application package in the future.

I will close with a letter to my future peers and my reflection on learning to be a technical writer.

My Reflection as a Letter:

Dear future ENGL2100 students,

I would like to tell you about something I learned in this class that turned out to be valuable to me. Depending on your style I would recommend you take a similar approach especially if you have a hard time getting started on a project as I do. Both of my projects I wrote with the intent of using them in real life. This increased the pressure to succeed because my motivation expanded from getting a good grade to producing a product that is personally useful. Additional added benefits were peer reviews that gave me valuable feedback that I can use to modify the project. Where else am I going to get a peer-reviewed resume? I would rather make consequential mistakes in class than in a job application package. 

The Writing Project:

Doing a project that would be used in a real scenario was not a requirement, but I’m glad I stumbled upon the idea of it. Fabricating an idea from scratch is harder for me so expanding a real-world scenario (like electric vehicles) in a way that is compelling to many people I found to be rhetorically intuitive. Additionally, in the writing project, I progressed from not having much material in the beginning, to having too much material. The inertia of the electric vehicle subject is so massive that I had to scale my project down by a factor of 6 to 8 times and still ended up with over 2000 words.

The Design Project:

This was a particularly useful assignment because the document I created is a standard in my field that I expect to use in the near future on an internship application. The most interesting thing about this assignment is how I used nearly every other class I have done at SLCC to complete it. I even went to use CAD labs and talk to past instructors that I haven't seen in a while so that was cool to touch base. I about broke my computer one time when I had AutoCAD, Solidworks, InDesign, Photoshop, and Word going all at once. Learning a lot about InDesign was great too because I found out that it is a standard in my field. 

So, my ENGL2100 advice to you is this: Observe something in the world you care about, then write to somebody about it. That’s it! That defines your subject, audience, and context, the technical aspects of the class will teach you the rest. No class will teach you to care, but your passion is a universally powerful tool that you should rely upon to achieve success. I would wish you good luck, but my Calculus teacher used to tell us before exams that it's not about the luck. You know what you're doing so tell yourself that and be confident.  

Best of luck, lol, 

Mick