Memorandum Reflection

Shahadat Rahman

English 21003

Professor Matyakubova

7 September, 2017

Reflection of Memorandum

Writing this memorandum helped me realize the significance of diction and word count. This assignment helped me become more economical with my word choice, and subsequently helped me choose words that would have a greater impact on my audience. It was also the greatest challenge for me during this piece. I was supposed to keep my message within a page — which was difficult considering I chose to write about mental health and suicide — but that also meant that I had to choose words with the most impact while keeping the flow of the piece. Typically, when students need to use vocabulary they use a thesaurus. Although a thesaurus is a helpful tool, students abuse the resource and consequently their writing sounds robotic. This assignment helped me avoid that because although I did have to use vocabulary, it still had to be effective and maintain the emotion and urgency in the message.

Furthermore, this assignment helped me realize the significance of the topic I chose. I originally chose this topic because it was something I knew a lot of people faced but I never realized how little support there was on college campuses for treatment. Researching this helped me discover the campus resources available to me but also called me to action as well. It helped me realize how much more aware I need to be of other people and turned the effort I put into the memo into something more than just an assignment.