ENGL 420: Business Writing

1.I am from Indonesia, a tropical country where it is hot all year long. In fact, my hometown is located right at the equator.
2.I am a junior in Chemical Engineering
3.After gaining some work experience in ChE field, I wish to pursue a graduate degree in business and, then be a full-time housewife and part-time business woman.
4.I hope that at the end of this course, I can speak with confidence with people, maybe future employer or business partner, in professional circumstances.
5.People say I sing very well, I'd like to think I still do, but I do not sing that much anymore.

During my time in high school and my early years here at Purdue, I generally just wrote in a way that I'd describe as taking my thoughts and writing them down with no real editing going into them. When I applied for an internship a couple summers ago at a home heating and natural gas comapany, however, I realized that I had to put more time and effort into editing my writing, and actually writing rough drafts before turning in my final product.

Tailoring your writing style for a specific audience is very important in professional writing. For example, if you go on a business trip and you want to write an e-mail about your daily activities and experiences, you would write one way if the e-mail was addressed to your boss, but most likely you would write a lot more casually if it was being sent to your friend. I can recall one experience last year where I had to adjust my writing style. After eating at a fast food restaurant, I became ill and found out I had food poisoning.

In the past, my writing style was either one of two ways. It was either creative and casual, as in poetry or letters to family and friends, or very straight forward and bland, writing projects for English classes. It wasn't until I applied for my first summer internship, at the Cincinnati Zoo, that learned that solely using either one of these styles would not do well in the real world. I learned that to make a successful cover letter I would have to blend both styles together. My letter would have to be professional but not dull.

I have written many texts and documents and adjusted the substance for a specific audience, but one experience in particular seems more significant than the rest. At my high school graduation, I gave a speech as the President of the student body and the Salutatorian of our senior class. I had included so many pieces of advice and quotations about the future that were, in my opinion, very important.

Throughout my life there have been numerous times where I have had to write for a specific audience. One particular instance I remember was when I was working at my dance studio. I was the receptionist and I was asked to compose a letter to the students parents informing them about costumes and competitions for the year. I found this to be a lot harder than I had originally thought because I really wanted to sound professional and mature. I was only 17 but I wanted to appear just as competent as the older teachers at the studio.

There have been many instances where i have had to adjust my writing style to suit an audience. The most recent instance I can think of would have to be the application and scholarship process before college. Many of the scholarships are looking for different types of writing and other special characteristics in order to be one the recipients. In each other the different scholarships, I had to adjust and tweak the ways i approached different topics in order to even be considered for the scholarship.

There have been many cases where I as a student or an employee have had to adjust my writing in order to improve my relations with my audience.
One of these times includes writing thank you letters for scholarships that I had received from companies. I was given a format to follow and advised to personalize it by stating why I was thankful for the academic gift.
The specific scholarship was given to me by Krannert School of Management. It took a longer time for me to prepare the letter than I anticipated because the letter itself had restrictions to its length.

Whenever I write anything I always keep in mind who will be reading it and create it for the specific audience. Keeping in mind the audience is one of the most important things when writing, I believe. Last semester for a class assignment I had to create a brochure for first-time parents. This project was meant to inform the reader. For this paper, I had to inform new parents of information on raising children. I kept in mind all the different people who would possibly read it. Everyone would have different education backgrounds and different intelligence.

Two summers ago when I accepeted an internship at CB Richard Ellis, a commercial real estate firm, I had to revise my writing style. When communicating with my peers and bosses I had to write in a more professional manner. Whether it was communicating via email or revising various brochures, my writing had to change. I believe it was a great experince going from communicating with others my age to then communicating with others in a more professional setting. It was difficult to change the style of my writing because I had no experince or guide on what to do.