Fatima Faisal
ENGL 21300-M
Professor Matyakubova
10th Febrayary, 2018
Reflection to Memo Writing Experience
While writing my memo on Public
Higher Education, I was able to implement many course learning objectives. On
the first day of class, we learned about rhetorical situations which helped me
“develop rhetorical sensibility” into my writing. Although I knew of effective
techniques to use in my writing prior to taking this course, I was having
trouble putting my words and thoughts together on a paper. After practicing
freewriting several times in class, as well as fully understanding the meaning
of purpose, audience and stance, it made it easier for me to quickly choose my
topic of memo and write freely. I remember when I was first introduced to the
syllabus, writing a memo was terrifying. With so many ideas in mind, I was
incapable of narrowing my ideas down to one, but this changed after we were
assigned to group work on formulating a memo on a crucial topic, “Accessibility
for Disabled Students.” With the group activity, I was able to “acknowledge
mine and other group members’ range of linguistic differences.” Every member
had various skills and interest, participating in the activity allowed me to
understand the importance of memos and helped me brainstorm my idea out of the
many options I had in mind.
As an active student on campus and
an intern at an advocacy group, taking a stance in my writing was difficult to
do until this memo was written. My every work at my internship place requires me to inform
students of some social issues and encourage them to take action. The only
difference was, this was done through attending events, tabling and being part
of campaigns, and now my fight for higher education funding was put into a
memo, hopefully to be distributed to students on campus.
Apart from having a great experience
writing the memo, there was one simple challenge I faced. Memos are supposed to
be short and straight to the point, but this was very hard for me to do. I went
above one page and had trouble cutting out some information. After constant
revising, I saw repetition and unnecessary words in my “description” and
“solution paragraph,” so I removed them. It was a challenge for me but I
managed to get my memo into one page. Overall I loved the assignment, and hope
to write effective memos in my college and professional life.
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