Annabelle Tuma
Professor Weyn
Writing for Engineers
Reflection
Writing for Engineers is a class which has sought to equip us with the writing skills necessary to be successful in the field of engineering. Our assignments in this class taught us descriptive writing, creative writing analysis, research, creative writing, persuasive writing of the kind potentially used for grant proposals, and the basic lab report. We did this by writing an essay describing an egg, three researched reading responses (one creative, two non-fiction), a hypothetical persuasive email to garner funding for an engineering project, and a fictionalized preliminary lab report.
Our first assignment was to describe an egg. When this prompt was first presented in class, I was excited to have the opportunity to creatively present information on a very open-ended subject. This ended up being a theme for the class work (quality of writing and understanding, rather than ability to answer a very specific question), and I feel that this deceptively simple-sounding assignment was a really fun first example of this.
For this essay, I first chose to focus on the egg of a chicken specifically as this sort of egg is the one most often referred to simply as “an egg.” Choosing to write about eggs in general felt like far too broad a topic to attempt to cover in a relatively short essay. After narrowing down my scope of focus, though, I still wanted to try to cover almost everything about chicken eggs beyond their most obvious uses. I started with their creation in the system of hens, and how the process takes 25 hours with or without fertilization. Next, I described their physical appearance as precisely as I could, including both the shell and the inner organic matter, and possible variations of their appearance. Then I went on to list the many different uses of these eggs. First and foremost, they are edible in many different ways (for example: raw, cooked in numerous forms, and baked). I detailed their nutritional value as a context for why they are so often consumed. Then I listed their more unorthodox uses, such as the way they are decorated to celebrate Easter and used to make nutrient-rich compost. After doing so, I summed up the essay by referring back to my original thesis about how complex and multifaceted eggs are and how their numerous forms of existence and use support this.
After the Egg Essay, our next assignment was a reading response to an excerpt of the book “Distant Waves,” written by our very own professor. The book is a historical fiction novel about the Titanic, and the assigned excerpt was about a family who was unexpectedly caught in one of Nikola Tesla’s experiments with a vibrating machine which caused a man-made earthquake in downtown Manhattan. This event actually occurred in real life though Nikola Tesla’s interaction with the family in this story is fabricated. Our assignment was to react to the reading with a summary and our own writing with additional research about a facet of the story that interested us. Though this assignment was more restricting than the last one, we were told that almost any aspect of the story would be acceptable to choose for further research, and the point was simply to learn how to write a cohesive reading responsive and to practice researching topics academically.
The topic from “Distant Waves” that I chose to further research was Tesla’s real-life work on Vibrational Patterns and Resonance. This topic was already fascinating to me before the class reading so I was happy to have the chance to learn about the subject for this class. My thesis for this portion of the essay was that Tesla’s research was revolutionary. I supported this by showing that he made discoveries which were completely new at the time, and which have since contributed to technology that we use today. Specifically, I wrote about how Tesla was the first person to ever understand how resonance works in our physical world. This was hugely significant because resonance contributed to disasters like suspension bridge collapses prior or Tesla’s discoveries. His understanding of resonance also led him to discover radio transmitting, which over time led to the wifi that we use everyday. I finished by summarizing this information and my conclusion that Tesla’s work on resonance was revolutionary and significant even still to our modern world.
The next assignment was another reading response, but this time to an article about the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. The structure of this assignment was the same as the last: to summarize the text adequately and further research an engaging aspect of the text, however this reading was non-fiction meaning that the research would be slightly more restricted to the science of the bridge’s construction. Though this didn’t significantly change my approach to this assignment, it may have been relevant if I had chosen a less technical topic for my “Distant Waves” reading response.
The reading itself followed the Brooklyn Bridge’s construction through the family responsible for its design and eventual existence. The first person to ever want to construct this bridge was Joe Roebling. He was the first to design the bridge, though he died very early into its actual construction. His role was taken over by his son, Washington Roebling. Washington Roebling was actually taken badly ill partly into the construction as well, though he did not die, and his orders and vision for the bridge were conveyed by his wife Emily Roebling. Apart from information about this family, the article listed information about the major elements of construction in chronological order, eventually concluding with the completed construction of the bridge in 1883. I summarized the text, and then chose to focus on the subject of caissons for my researched response. Caissons were a sort of open-topped structure extending from the floor of the riverbank to the surface of the water used to help workers construct bridge foundations during this time, but since pressure and its potential to cause illness had yet to be discovered, “caisson sickness” (known to us now as “the bends”) was rampant and many fell ill. I chose this topic because I had never heard of caissons before and was fascinated by the way a then-routine construction technique can now so easily be identified as incredibly dangerous. These caissons also played a very significant role in the construction of the bridge, and were responsible for Washington Roebling’s illness and extended incapacitation. My response’s intent was to highlight how rampant and extreme the caisson’s effects on the construction workers of this project were, which I did by researching and writing about decompression sickness (“the bends”), and about how seriously precautions against contracting it are taken now.
Our next assignment was to write a persuasive email as if we had amicably met a billionaire and were trying to persuade them to fund our dream project (which had to be at least an engineering-esq venture). This was one of the most important assignments in this class, and we were told to begin brainstorming ideas for our dream project early in the semester. I chose to make my project a large urban aquaponics farm to combat food deserts because building an urban farm large enough to serve an entire city would be pretty unrealistic if not for hypothetical billionaire funding. I also chose this topic because I took an aquaponics class in high school that I deeply enjoyed, and felt I knew enough about the subject to write a fairly realistic plea for funding. Because I am from Chicago, I planned to make this farm serve food deserts of Chicago.
We were told to have a general archetype of a billionaire in our heads when writing this letter, and I chose to model my billionaire on J. B. Pritzker, the governor of Illinois. I felt he made an ideal choice because not only is he a real billionaire, but an urban farm serving food deserts of Chicago would be an ideal investment for a politician attempting to gain the support of their constituents (or attempting to support their constituents, depending on how jaded your perspective is). I made sure to note in my letter that I met my billionaire at J. B. Pritzker’s charity gala, and highlighted benefits of this farm from all perspectives. Not only would an urban farm help Chicago residents suffering from a lack of resources, aquaponic farms also use half the water of traditional agriculture while providing two food sources at once. Additionally, they cut down on carbon emissions by requiring far less transportation from farm to table, and use far less gasoline as a result. I concluded the email by saying that this hypothetical billionaire could become a board member of the farm, hopefully an enticing prospect for a politician concerned with public appearance. Overall, I feel that the assignment was a fun and effective practice of persuasive writing.
Our next assignment was to write a lab report of some kind of fictionalized preliminary experiment that would be relevant to the dream project of our last assignment. The goal was not to have us do any sort of research on the actual experiment (though we were told we could if we wanted to) but to learn the general form of a lab report and to practice writing one. We also had to make a graph to include with our report, to ensure that we knew how to create one.
My fictionalized experiment was to test the growth of plants in aquaponic systems versus those grown in traditional soil. This sort of experiment would hypothetically be useful to garner funding for such a project as it could prove the efficiency of aquaponic systems. I was able to find an actual example of this experiment online to base my report on, which helped me focus on correctly presenting the procedure and findings instead of on trying to create fictional but realistic information. I was also quite happy to find that the experiment showed the superiority of aquaponic systems for growing crops! My graph did present fictionalized statistics, but creating it was still useful for learning how one would hypothetically present real data.
Overall, I found all of the assignments in this class to be unique in concept and helpful for developing skills as a researcher and writer. The open ended nature of many of our papers meant that I was able to research and write about topics that I chose and found interesting, which made the class and assignments engaging. I also know much more about caissons than I ever expected to!
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