This has been my first writing class in four years, the first assignment helped me to remember the essentials of writing. The second assignment was a memo to the President of the college, Mr. Vincent Boudreau. This memo included a problem, which was that the classes at CCNY start too early. We brain stormed as a class to come up with reasonable solutions to this problem. Memos inherently are short and concise, however the notes from the in-class discussion gave me many ideas on how to make my memo compelling. My challenge was to pick what I felt were the most reasonable ideas. I then gave them two main attributes cost and time as these are what seemed most important to me at the time. In trying to dial in the scope of the memo my first draft lacked a major component, a statement of purpose, along with needing other various corrections.

The first action I took was to add my statement of purpose, my other corrections varied from grammar corrections to my memo needing extra content. Aside from a better description of the problem I added a third attribute to each solution, which was effectiveness. I found this effective in keeping my memo concise while stating my case to the point of enticing action.  Reading over both versions of my memo it has definitely progressed into something that I can confidently send to someone. I myself have progressed as a writer, I am able to accomplish twice as much per hour due to being able to properly plan my work. Also, I am able to make the most of peer and instructor review, something I am reliant on to put out my best literature. For this assignment I was glad to have four different people to supply me with a critique to review and make edits from.

My memo does have all the characteristic features of a professional memo, aside from being longer than one page. I found it was simply too much information to fit on one page no matter how small I made my heading, of coarse while still keeping the standard margins and font size. Exigence for this assignment stems from this assignment being informative and persuasive. The memo in no way lacked a clear purpose, I feel as though this purpose is fulfilled after reading the memo. My memo is addressed to the President of CCNY, but the intended audience is for anyone down his chain of command that can inform the President on possible courses of action that he can choose from. Considering my intended audience my tone remained formal throughout, it is not free of personal insight on the matter, but lacks jokes and asides of any kind. I wrote it in this matter because any perceived character flaw concluded from my writing may be grounds to dismiss my memo in its entirety.

In conclusion I feel as though the memo assignment is great practice and I could use it as a reference when I need to write an actual memo for work. This assignment was a creative project that involved the class working in groups throughout the writing process. When comparing the complete process of writing my memo to the anticipated course outcomes for this semester I feel as though most main topics were at least covered in part during this process. This assignment not being technical in nature, we lacked using a database and the need to have work cited in which to reference throughout the paper. Although I did spend some time looking at the textbook and online resources outlining memos and giving specific techniques to each segment of the memo. The curriculum I did practice in group meetings was engaging in a social brainstorming atmosphere before beginning my outline, and acknowledging others writing through peer review. This assignment also involved a complete process involving a first draft, editing, revising, and self-assessment. These were all necessary to ensure my writing was accurately written in terms of genre and rhetorical situation. The fore mentioned topics are all basic fundamentals of writing.  What I liked most about this assignment is it allowed for me to practice having my voice heard through articulating my stance through my writing.

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