Toni Zakarija WRD 599

Self-Assessment Paper I originally began my Master s program at DePaul University in the English department. I had graduated with a B.S. in English. When I started my English MA I didn t have a particular focus. I had a vague idea that I would either enter law school or pursue a PhD in English after completing my Master s; more than anything, I felt that I was pursuing an English MA because I didn t know what else to do. It seems strange to have a Bachelor s of Science in English, but once I discovered the WRD department and technical writing careers, my odd degree made much more sense to me. I began as a Master s student in the English department. As an undergrad, I enjoyed the freedom that came with studying literature. The lack of structure was appealing. But, when I started my Master s studies I found that I began to feel differently. I felt frustrated because I didn t feel challenged. I was unhappy that I was repeating exactly what I had learned in my undergraduate career. I took a course in the WRD department by accident (Modern Rhetoric) during my first quarter at DePaul and discovered that studies in WRD offered a good blend of freedom and structure. I officially switched over to the WRD program during the summer of 2011. I found that WRD approaches language studies in a systematic and logical manner much like the research methods I studied in my undergraduate science classes (when I was a premed student), but still offers the freedom of interpretation that I so enjoyed in my English classes. After settling into the WRD program, I realize that my English B.S. degree and my current WRD studies perfectly

encapsulate my learning style; more structured and scientific research methods keep my mind focused, but the interpretations of the results afford me the freedom to explore. I find that my personal learning style fits best within a structured freedom. Now that I have been an official WRD student for a while I have come to understand what I have learned in the department has further refined my learning style because it has allowed me to understand how I learn. At the beginning of my entrance into the WRD program I was unsure of what career path I wanted to follow, but was sure that WRD suited my learning style. I began by taking classes both in the areas of Professional/Technical Writing and Teaching Writing . I ultimately decided that I wanted a career in technical writing, but I am still glad I took teaching writing classes because I firmly believe that learning how to teach writing made me a better writer. I took two teaching writing classes at DePaul and have never learned more about grammar. I felt that by learning how to teach someone else how to write properly, I myself also learned a lot about writing. I find that this actually reflects my learning style. Learning how to teach writing allowed me to break down a lot of concepts into smaller components. One of the reasons I learned so much about writing in these classes was because they provided the why for a lot of grammatical and structural concepts. In the past, I felt that teachers often glossed over the why ; I was simply taught the rules and expected to follow them. Learning the reasoning for such rules helped cement the concepts into my mind. I believe learning the reasoning for the concepts is much akin to learning the why in many science and math concepts. If you don t understand why a certain component is important or why it must be addressed in a particular manner, it is much harder to retain the information.

Much like understanding the reasoning of concepts, portfolios I have created for previous classes have really allowed me to reflect on my experience create a further metaknowledge and awareness of what I learned and how I learned it. I was first introduced to the portfolio concept in my teaching writing class. The portfolio not only allowed me to see my past work as many smaller units that worked individually but also as components that worked in unison to create one cohesive piece. Over my graduate school career I have found that I learn best when I am able to break down items into smaller components and look at each piece carefully. Once I am able to do this, then I like to go back and try and put the pieces back together so that I can understand how each component works with another and then how and what impact they have when they work together and then at a larger scale look at the entire product as one product. I ve found that the creation of a portfolio allows me to observe each stage of my learning as one individual component, but also allows me to look at my education as a whole and observe overarching ideas, patterns, and themes. One class exercise that most exemplified my preferred deconstructivereconstructive learning approach appeared in my Technical Editing class last quarter. Carolyn Rude s book Technical Editing helped me understand the seven sentence types and their components. Rude s sentence type explanation models the way I already break down concepts and put them back together in order to understand them. Rude breaks down the components and categorizes them according to like characteristics. Each categorization is identified with a particular visual aspect (such as a rectangular box, dashed lines, etc.) in order to set it apart from the other sentence components in order to show how these particular components operate and give meaning to the sentence as a whole. Last week,

during WRD 599: Portfolio, a class exercise recounting a learning experience allowed me to receive others feedback on my learning styles and patterns. The feedback I received helped me reinforce my assumptions on my learning style. The feedback affirmed my ability as a visual learner, who breaks concepts down into manageable pieces, and that I have a technical way of looking at things (in order to teach to others). Hearing others confirm my learning style suspicions helped me reflect on my studies and work and re-evaluate how I completed that work in order to gain a greater understanding of who I am as a learner and how to approach new information in the future. Meta-cognition has been a great tool in helping me efficiently tailor my learning style. My future career path choice definitely is a reflection on my learning style and my right-brain/left-brain way of thinking. I plan on graduating from the WRD program with a concentration in Professional and Technical Writing . As someone who likes to think about writing in a disciplined scientific manner, a career in technical writing is a great match. I am particularly interested in working for a pharmaceutical company (chemistry, specifically, is my favorite of the sciences). I m interested in the pharmaceutical industry because I like chemistry. I completed courses in both inorganic and organic chemistry in college, which allowed me to obtain a Bachelor s of Science. If possible, within the pharmaceutical industry, I would like to write and research instruction sets and professional writing sets dedicated to drugs for women.