Joseph Cahill
28 Evergreen Way S.W
Calgary Alberta T2Y 3K7
May 2, 2011
Dave Campbell
Vice President of Operations
BP Canada
240 4th Ave S.W
Calgary AB T2Y 3K7
Dr Mr Campbell:
I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself to you as a writer in hopes of gaining part time employment with BP Canada. I have recently completed an English 111 course, which was offered through the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The course has taught me a great deal about the writing process and has made me a much stronger writer.
My father, Paul Cahill, works at BP Canada and has only great things to say about the company. He has informed me of an internship position in your Human Resources department and has recommended it to me. I feel that BP will provide a positive business atmosphere that will allow for me to get to know the ropes in the business world.
I have attached a copy of my writing resume and I would hope that you take a moment to read over it. I feel that with my Dad working for the company already I will be able to settle in at BP very quickly. I feel that my English course has taught me enough to be a valuable asset to your company. I am quite a hard worker and I work well in a team environment. This would be a great opportunity for me and I would love nothing more than to have a chance to work with BP.
Thank you very much for your time and for your consideration. I look forward to hearing from you in the near future.
Sincerely,
Joseph Cahill
Joseph Cahill
English F111
Monday, May 2, 2011
Lesson 15 Prompt: Writing Resume
Joseph Cahill
28 Evergreen Way S.W
Calgary Alberta T2Y 3K7
Jscahill2@alaska.edu
Objective: To use the information taught in ENGL F111X to gain employment with BP Canada
Academic Writing Experience:
Winter 2011 Introduction to Academic Writing-ENGL F111X
• “ You Don’t Know What You’ve Got Until It’s Gone” - Composed a two page essay on a personal weakness I discovered through previous life experiences
• “Battle Brewing in the Oil Sands”- Completed a seven page essay that supported development in the Athabasca oil sands. The topic is very controversial in Canada. Researched the topic and consulted nine different sources before completing the essay. Work cited page and a working bibliography were also included in the assignment.
Modern World History- HIST F100X
• “Economic Growth Models”- Wrote a 1,500 word essay discussing the three free market economic models for growth that were present in the early 1980’s. Also completed four single paragraph definition for the terms Milton Freedman, Japan-bashing, Confusion capitalism and Gastarbeiter.
Fall 2008 SAT Written Response
• “ A Strong Leader” – Completed an essay on why it is necessary for any group of people to be governed in some way by an individual with strong leadership skills
Additional Writing Experience:
Fall 2008 Prepared and delivered a three page speech for a cousins wedding
Fall 2008 Composed a 250 word essay on what life lessons I had learned through hockey for a scholarship application
Fall 2007 Prepared and delivered a four page eulogy for a friends funeral
References: Available upon request
28 Evergreen Way S.W
Calgary Alberta T2Y 3K7
Jscahill2@alaska.edu
Objective: To use the information taught in ENGL F111X to gain employment with BP Canada
Academic Writing Experience:
Winter 2011 Introduction to Academic Writing-ENGL F111X
• “ You Don’t Know What You’ve Got Until It’s Gone” - Composed a two page essay on a personal weakness I discovered through previous life experiences
• “Battle Brewing in the Oil Sands”- Completed a seven page essay that supported development in the Athabasca oil sands. The topic is very controversial in Canada. Researched the topic and consulted nine different sources before completing the essay. Work cited page and a working bibliography were also included in the assignment.
Modern World History- HIST F100X
• “Economic Growth Models”- Wrote a 1,500 word essay discussing the three free market economic models for growth that were present in the early 1980’s. Also completed four single paragraph definition for the terms Milton Freedman, Japan-bashing, Confusion capitalism and Gastarbeiter.
Fall 2008 SAT Written Response
• “ A Strong Leader” – Completed an essay on why it is necessary for any group of people to be governed in some way by an individual with strong leadership skills
Additional Writing Experience:
Fall 2008 Prepared and delivered a three page speech for a cousins wedding
Fall 2008 Composed a 250 word essay on what life lessons I had learned through hockey for a scholarship application
Fall 2007 Prepared and delivered a four page eulogy for a friends funeral
References: Available upon request
Lesson 14 Prompt: If You Could Do It All Again
Write about what you wish you had done differently while you worked on your paper.
Overall I am fairly happy with how my research paper went. I was very happy with my planning and research. I think I planned and researched enough to fully understand the topic and all opinions on it. Obviously it is fairly tough to defend something that has a negative environmental impact. I wish I had have gone over the environmental argument a little more thoroughly but I was running out of available space. One thing that greatly helped with the writing process was having summaries of each source I used. When I was looking to make a certain point it was easy to look back over my notes and find which source would support that point best. I wrote the rough draft in only one day and I sort of rushed it a little bit. This led to some wording problems that made the revising process a little bit longer. Having my mom there to help me in the revising process was great though and I was able to fix most of my mistakes. This was a really fun topic to research as it is so controversial here in Canada. The federal election is today and two of the major parties ran on platforms that may slow oil sands development and it will be very interesting to see what happens if they get power. All things considered I am pretty happy with how everything went and I look forward to similar writing assignments in the future.
Overall I am fairly happy with how my research paper went. I was very happy with my planning and research. I think I planned and researched enough to fully understand the topic and all opinions on it. Obviously it is fairly tough to defend something that has a negative environmental impact. I wish I had have gone over the environmental argument a little more thoroughly but I was running out of available space. One thing that greatly helped with the writing process was having summaries of each source I used. When I was looking to make a certain point it was easy to look back over my notes and find which source would support that point best. I wrote the rough draft in only one day and I sort of rushed it a little bit. This led to some wording problems that made the revising process a little bit longer. Having my mom there to help me in the revising process was great though and I was able to fix most of my mistakes. This was a really fun topic to research as it is so controversial here in Canada. The federal election is today and two of the major parties ran on platforms that may slow oil sands development and it will be very interesting to see what happens if they get power. All things considered I am pretty happy with how everything went and I look forward to similar writing assignments in the future.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Lesson 13 Prompt: Consulting Others
Write about your experience consulting with someone about your writing.Include what that person told you about your writing. You can email me the name of the person who read your paper if you wish not to include that name here.
I decided to consult two different sources to help me revise my essay. First I contacted the writing center last week to get a little help from them. I had a little trouble as they were very busy and had to cancel my appointment last Thursday last minute. We rescheduled for this Monday and things went fairly smoothly. My instructor was pretty helpful although it was a little difficult to do over the phone. He helped me find various small mistakes that I had made in my writing and also suggested that I break up a few of my page long paragraphs into smaller paragraphs. A lot of mistakes that we found together were simple errors that I should have found myself if I had have proof read the essay. There was a little trouble with matching up pages over the phone. As I added and deleted phrases and sentences, the page numbers no longer matched up but that was only a minor problem. We talked a little bit about proper citation and when to use quotation marks and when not to but I am still not feeling totally comfortable with them. I am calling the center again tonight and hopefully someone there will help make things a little clearer. We talked on the phone for about fourty minuets and being that it was a long distance call it might hurt my phone bill but it was well worth it. All in all I was really grateful for the writing centers help, it really is an awesome service and its free! I should have consulted the writing center before now but next year I will definitely take advantage of the opportunity.
The other person I turned to for help is my mom. Although she didn’t study English in school she is a great writer and always helped me with my writing in high school. We don’t live together any more so I had to email her it and we talked through the paper over skype, which is much easier than over the phone. Using skype you can share your computer screen with the person you are talking to so she was able to walk me through all her editing. She found more mistakes with my paper than the writing center and it was a slightly longer process. Most of the problems she found in the paper were wording mistakes that might confuse the reader. We decided to add a little more background information in the introduction to help the reader keep pace. Many of my mistakes were made because I rushed through writing my essay and did not notice. I did not proof read the essay after I was finished and if I had I think I could have found many of the mistakes myself.
Having others proof read my work has been very helpful through my writing education. My mom has always been the one I turn to when I am stuck or need a little help. One great thing she has taught me to do is to say the point I am trying to make aloud to myself and then put it down on paper afterward. This helps to make your points clear to readers.
I decided to consult two different sources to help me revise my essay. First I contacted the writing center last week to get a little help from them. I had a little trouble as they were very busy and had to cancel my appointment last Thursday last minute. We rescheduled for this Monday and things went fairly smoothly. My instructor was pretty helpful although it was a little difficult to do over the phone. He helped me find various small mistakes that I had made in my writing and also suggested that I break up a few of my page long paragraphs into smaller paragraphs. A lot of mistakes that we found together were simple errors that I should have found myself if I had have proof read the essay. There was a little trouble with matching up pages over the phone. As I added and deleted phrases and sentences, the page numbers no longer matched up but that was only a minor problem. We talked a little bit about proper citation and when to use quotation marks and when not to but I am still not feeling totally comfortable with them. I am calling the center again tonight and hopefully someone there will help make things a little clearer. We talked on the phone for about fourty minuets and being that it was a long distance call it might hurt my phone bill but it was well worth it. All in all I was really grateful for the writing centers help, it really is an awesome service and its free! I should have consulted the writing center before now but next year I will definitely take advantage of the opportunity.
The other person I turned to for help is my mom. Although she didn’t study English in school she is a great writer and always helped me with my writing in high school. We don’t live together any more so I had to email her it and we talked through the paper over skype, which is much easier than over the phone. Using skype you can share your computer screen with the person you are talking to so she was able to walk me through all her editing. She found more mistakes with my paper than the writing center and it was a slightly longer process. Most of the problems she found in the paper were wording mistakes that might confuse the reader. We decided to add a little more background information in the introduction to help the reader keep pace. Many of my mistakes were made because I rushed through writing my essay and did not notice. I did not proof read the essay after I was finished and if I had I think I could have found many of the mistakes myself.
Having others proof read my work has been very helpful through my writing education. My mom has always been the one I turn to when I am stuck or need a little help. One great thing she has taught me to do is to say the point I am trying to make aloud to myself and then put it down on paper afterward. This helps to make your points clear to readers.
Lesson 11 Prompt: Summarizing
On your blog, write about your experience summarizing the reading
Some of the articles that I have been using for my research paper have been tough to summarize while others have been easier. I am doing my research paper on the Alberta oil sands and the oil industry in that region. The majority of the articles I have found weigh the pros and cons of the issue and are fairly straight forward. These articles use facts and generally simplistic arguments to assert their claims. All of these articles are written for newspapers and are fairly easy to read so that the general public can make sense of them. These articles are fairly easy to summarize. That being said a minority of the articles use complex language and terms in them. These articles are for the most part written by industry insiders and there target audience is other people in the industry. When reading these articles I have consulted my dad to help me make better sense of them. He is in the oil business so he has been a great help making sense of these articles. The differing audience used by the writers of these articles has showed me how important it is to identify your audience before you begin writing. If you are writing a child’s book you cannot use complex wording and phrases that are way over a third graders head. While summarizing these articles has been fairly time consuming it has been very time saving in the long run. I have just finished writing out the rough draft of my research paper. As I planned out my essay I needed to use different references to strengthen my arguments. Having the summaries out in front of me allowed me to glance over them to decide which reference would be best in which part of my essay. It would have been much more difficult and ended up taking a lot more time if I had have just tried to remember the key points of each article in my head. The most useful article I found was the article “ Canada’s Tar Sands: Muck and Brass” from The Economist. It had a lot of strong arguments in favour of developing the oil sands and a lot of statistics that were very useful for my essay. It was one of the articles that was written for a wide audience and very easy to follow along with. In my Econ class we were required to subscribe to The Economist and we have to read a couple articles from it each week. It is a very well written magazine and I find it is usually written from an unbiased point of view. I searched for more articles from that magazine but could not find any more. It would have been nice to have another one to use but oh well. My mom is currently helping me proof read over the rough copy and I have an appointment with the writing center tomorrow. Hopefully there will not be to many problems with it and maybe I’ll be able to get it done this week!
Some of the articles that I have been using for my research paper have been tough to summarize while others have been easier. I am doing my research paper on the Alberta oil sands and the oil industry in that region. The majority of the articles I have found weigh the pros and cons of the issue and are fairly straight forward. These articles use facts and generally simplistic arguments to assert their claims. All of these articles are written for newspapers and are fairly easy to read so that the general public can make sense of them. These articles are fairly easy to summarize. That being said a minority of the articles use complex language and terms in them. These articles are for the most part written by industry insiders and there target audience is other people in the industry. When reading these articles I have consulted my dad to help me make better sense of them. He is in the oil business so he has been a great help making sense of these articles. The differing audience used by the writers of these articles has showed me how important it is to identify your audience before you begin writing. If you are writing a child’s book you cannot use complex wording and phrases that are way over a third graders head. While summarizing these articles has been fairly time consuming it has been very time saving in the long run. I have just finished writing out the rough draft of my research paper. As I planned out my essay I needed to use different references to strengthen my arguments. Having the summaries out in front of me allowed me to glance over them to decide which reference would be best in which part of my essay. It would have been much more difficult and ended up taking a lot more time if I had have just tried to remember the key points of each article in my head. The most useful article I found was the article “ Canada’s Tar Sands: Muck and Brass” from The Economist. It had a lot of strong arguments in favour of developing the oil sands and a lot of statistics that were very useful for my essay. It was one of the articles that was written for a wide audience and very easy to follow along with. In my Econ class we were required to subscribe to The Economist and we have to read a couple articles from it each week. It is a very well written magazine and I find it is usually written from an unbiased point of view. I searched for more articles from that magazine but could not find any more. It would have been nice to have another one to use but oh well. My mom is currently helping me proof read over the rough copy and I have an appointment with the writing center tomorrow. Hopefully there will not be to many problems with it and maybe I’ll be able to get it done this week!
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Lesson 10 Prompt: Freewrite
I am starting to get more confident about writing my research paper. I like the classical argument format because it will include my own three arguments, a summary of my opponent’s arguments and a rebuttal. The latter two paragraphs will allow for more writing thus helping me to fulfill the seven to ten page requirements. In my research I have found a lot of pros to developing Alberta’s oil sands but not many cons. Most of the articles I have read explain why they should be developed followed by a brief summary of the environmental concerns and then reasoning why those environmental concerns should be discredited. One reason I believe that there are not many articles on the other side of the argument is because of the lack of resources the green movement against the oil sands has at this point. It is impossible to ignore the environmental impacts of the oil sands development but they seem to be an afterthought in the Canadian media. Big oil has a lot of money and weapons in their advertising campaign to get people on their side and the environmentalist are fighting an uphill battle. I would like to see a more balanced perspective on the issue but I do not know if that will ever be possible with all the money the oil companies have to throw around. Despite this fact my research has been very helpful in creating my arguments. The facts and numbers that the articles use will be very helpful to me in conveying my ideas. One area that I am struggling with though is who my audience should be. I am not sure if I should write to the people of Canada, or the people in power around the world who will be consuming the oil. The deadline is getting pretty close now, time to bear down.
Lesson 9 Prompt: Am I Threatened?
Why am I feeling threatened by this research paper (if you are)? or Why am I feeling confident about this research paper?
I am feeling a little bit threatened by this research paper. I know that I have written many papers before so I really shouldn’t be threatened but the fact that this paper is required to be seven to ten pages long is very unnerving. I have never written a paper that long before and I really hope I can come up with enough arguments to fill the space. I think that I have found enough sources to come up with arguments but you never know until you put pen to paper.
I am feeling a little bit threatened by this research paper. I know that I have written many papers before so I really shouldn’t be threatened but the fact that this paper is required to be seven to ten pages long is very unnerving. I have never written a paper that long before and I really hope I can come up with enough arguments to fill the space. I think that I have found enough sources to come up with arguments but you never know until you put pen to paper.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)