Self-Assessment EssayMahir Shahriar ENGL 21007 Writing For Engineering Professor Sara Jacobson Self-Assessment Essay Coming into this class, I didn’t have high expectations for myself. I had always struggled with writing classes ever since elementary school, and I had not ever improved in them. This was mainly due to my mindset. I’ve always operated in the manner that there was always one right answer and that other answers were wrong. In writing classes, there was no one right answer. These classes rode the fine line between right and wrong, forcing you to create an answer that could be considered neither right nor wrong which you would have to prove and defend. I asked some of my upperclassmen friends who also took Writing For Engineering, and they all told me that this class was very light, so I came into this class with high hopes that it wouldn’t be a struggle like my previous English classes. However, this class proved to be more difficult than I could have thought, but as a result, I grew a lot. This class demanded higher-quality writing than I had ever done. Throughout the semester, we were reminded of a few course learning objectives that we were tasked to meet as well as we could.  One of the course learning objectives we aimed to meet was to be able to acknowledge my own and others’ range of linguistic differences as resources and draw on those resources to develop a rhetorical sensibility. I believe that I was able to meet this course learning objective. I believe this was most apparent during the Group Engineering Proposal Essay. In that essay, we worked together with our group to construct one piece of writing which was the culmination of our brainstorming, designing, and modeling. My group made an automatic sewing repair machine, a sewing machine that can fix holes in clothing and repair them without any user work. While this assignment had some setbacks with group members, ultimately my remaining group member and I had to work together to produce one piece of writing, where both our writing styles would clash. We needed to bring our writing styles together and write in harmony to create a cohesive and comprehensive proposal essay, which I believe we were able to do. The next course learning objective we were tasked with meeting was to enhance strategies for reading, drafting, revising, editing, and self-assessment. I believe that I have not met this course objective. Drafting, revising, and editing were concepts that were quite foreign to me. While I have done them in the past and last semester in Freshman Composition, I did not excel in them. From an early age, I was always told that drafting and revising was a waste of time. This was the mindset that I always had. Any revising that I would do would happen while I was writing and right after I was done when I would read the entire piece of writing in its entirety to see if it flowed well together. I always thought of drafting as a way to roughly get your ideas onto the paper, but I would have those ideas in my head, so I never thought I needed to. However, this class often required that I write the first drafts of assignments, and I never did well on the first drafts. I often couldn’t write a first draft as when I started writing, I just wanted to write the entire assignment. The first drafts that I would often write would be the beginning portion of what would eventually become my final submission, and that did not play out well for my grade as that was not the purpose of the first draft. While I did not fully utilize first drafts, I have come to understand their importance as I saw that many of my peers were able to write much higher quality final drafts if they had made a first draft. Unfortunately, this course objective was not one I was able to meet.  The next course objective was to be able to negotiate my own writing goals and audience expectations regarding conventions of genre, medium, and rhetorical situation. I believe that I was able to do this fairly well. My main goal with writing was always just to improve. I’ve always struggled in writing so I came into each assignment for it to be better than the last assignment. The quality of each piece would then be gauged by you, Professor Jacobson, and the grade would tell me how well I did, using that grade along with my own opinion on the writing, I could assess whether I believed I improved or not. The reason I also took into account my own opinion is because there were assignments where I believed I had lower quality writing but received an equal or higher grade than the last. One such example was the Engineering Proposal Essay compared to the Technical description. While I put so much more effort into my portion of the Engineering Proposal Essay, I believe it to be of inferior quality compared to that of my Technical Description, which received an equal grade for both.  The next course learning objective was to develop and engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes. This is a course learning objective that I believe I sufficiently met during the process of the Group Engineering Proposal Project. This essay and project was a group assignment, one where the writing portion would be split between group members, meaning we had to work together to mesh out the writing. We were able to do this efficiently by scheduling meet-ups and online calls through Discord to monitor each other progress in our respective components of the physical project and the writing portion when writing it together.  The next course learning objective to work on was to engage in genre analysis and multimodal composing to explore effective writing across disciplinary contexts and beyond. I sufficiently was able to do this during both the Technical Description and Group Engineering Proposal Essay where in both, I made use of pictures and diagrams for the items that I was writing about in both assignments. Also, in the process of doing both those assignments, I had to engage in the analysis of different when I had to utilize so many different forms of media for research, such as lab reports, articles, videos, essays, and blogs.  Another course objective we were tasked with was to formulate and articulate a stance through and in my writing. I don’t believe I did a good job at this or even did this at all. For most of my writing, I remained very neutral and tried to present only facts from an outsider’s perspective to get the best of both sides, such as in the Technical Description, where I wanted to give my own opinions and biases about keyboards, but settled only to use widely accepted facts from different websites and articles. One place I could have done this was during the Engineering Proposal Essay, where we had to pitch our idea of an automatic repair sewing machine, ultimately pushing our ideas and beliefs onto the potential sponsor for our product, although I don’t consider that a stance on something.  The last course objectives were to practice using various library resources, online databases, and the Internet to locate sources appropriate to your writing projects and to strengthen your source use practices (including evaluating, integrating, quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, analyzing, and citing sources). These were all things that we had to do over the entire semester for all the major assignments, but it became much more important during the Technical Description, as that’s where our first big research assignment came from. I believe I met this objective as over the Technical Description and the Engineering Proposal Essay, I did many hours of research and was able to properly use and cite them in those pieces of writing.  While I met most of the course objectives, the answer to the overarching question “What is writing?” still eluded me. Quite frankly, I think this is a question I can never get a concrete answer to. Our definition of writing will always evolve every time we write. Heck, I think it’s evolving as I write this assignment, this sentence even. However, this class had me spend a significant amount of time writing compared to other classes, which allowed me to think of what I think writing is. Before, my interpretation of writing was that it was merely a written form of communication. However, at this point, with all the writing for this class done, my answer to the question “What is writing?”, is merely a more complex form of written communication. While I still believe that writing is at heart, communication that is simply recorded, the style, form, and context of that writing greatly affects how the information is conveyed. This was made very clear to me when working on anything that required research. Lab reports were best at delivering pure hard data, while websites and blogs were best at giving general knowledge and opinions. Perhaps the next time I write and ponder this question, my answer will be different. But, that’s just how things are, as we learn, our thoughts change. Perhaps, I may never reach the concrete, universally-true answer that I want for that question, but that is okay.  References CUNY Academic Commons. CUNY Academic Commons Site Wide Activity RSS. (n.d.). https://engine210.commons.gc.cu […] “Self-Assessment Essay”

Group Engineering Project Self-ReflectionGroup Engineering Proposal Self-Reflection Essay  Mahir Shahriar Writing For Engineering 21007 Prof. Sara Jacobson This project was by far one of the hardest assignments in this class, and one of the worst experiences I have had working in a group. Initially, my group started with 4 members: Alex, Mohammed, Majid, and myself. Initially, during the first two days of the brainstorming process in class, we all showed up and gave our input. We were just throwing our heads together like cavemen in the stone age trying to come up with an idea, but we couldn’t seem to come to a consensus about anything. We then came up with an industry that we wanted to fix, and we agreed on education. Alex, Majid, and Mohammed were thinking of a hologram-type invention to be used in classrooms to help students better visualize the material, and this product could also be used in engineering firms to preview a live model. While this was a good idea, I protested it because of the approach that my group wanted to take with it. They planned out the research time and I was appalled that they had decided that we do almost 40 hours of research each during the break. That’s almost like having a full-time job just researching how the hologram would work, giving us zero time over the break to actually work on the essay, the models, the pictures, the logistics of how this item would bring profit, or the presentation that we were meant to give to the class. This coupled with the things that Majid wanted us to research for this project did not actually need to be looked into, such as spending a combined 38 hours between us researching photons and light particles. That was a ludicrous amount of time spent on researching a very big concept that the hologram barely utilizes. I also had prior plans where I would not be in New York during the break, which meant that I did not have the time to put that amount of time into research. I protested that decision and my group came to agree with me. However, while we were still in our brainstorming phase, Majid disappeared. He stopped coming to class, and all attempts to contact him failed. This was a large amount of work that we now had to cover, but Alex, Mohammed, and I had properly split the work for our new idea, an automatic sewing machine. We developed a timeline in which we wanted parts of the project done and were all active in the group chat. I must admit here, that I was not being the best group member. During the break, I had gotten sick and was unable to get my research in with the group at the proper time, and I was not properly communicating with my group about this issue. Looking back at it now, I don’t know why I didn’t tell them that I was unable to complete that research and asked for help from one of them to get that research done at the right time. As the end of the break drew closer, Mohammed and I sent our research to the group chat. This is when we noticed that Alex stopped talking in the group chat and did not submit his portion of the research. Any further attempts to reach him were unsuccessful and we realized a couple of days before the project was due that we had lost another member. Losing Alex was very impactful as he had a key part in researching the scanner and working on the modeling and CADing along with the cost + materials, and intended market. Mohammed and I had to rush to fill up that void but ultimately we were not able to finish the essay on time. Despite all the setbacks and problems, I learned a lot about group work as I now know I need to be more vocal about my opinions and be able to […] “Group Engineering Project Self-Reflection”

Group Engineering Proposal Essay Group Engineering Proposal Essay Mahir Shahriar & Mohammed Yacoub City College of New York Professor Sara Jacobson ENGL 21007 Writing For Engineering Group Engineering Proposal Essay Introduction Sewing machines are one of the most impactful inventions ever created. Before the creation of sewing machines, all the clothes people wore were sewn by hand, mostly by housewives. The process of hand-sewing clothes was not only arduous to the person making the clothes but also extremely time-consuming. Making a single piece of clothing could take the entire day or even longer. The invention of the sewing machine enabled people to expedite the process but also allowed them to commercialize the process by having factories where people could make clothes nonstop. Over time, many improvements have been made to sewing machines to be both time and energy-efficient and yield better results through stronger stitching techniques. However, one part of innovation that hasn’t seen much thought is fully autonomous sewing machines. When we mean fully autonomous sewing machines, we don’t mean sewing machines where the needle bobs up and down by itself and the stitching just happens as you move the clothing on the machine, that’s just a normal sewing machine. What we mean by a fully autonomous sewing machine is a sewing machine that can perform exactly what is needed of it without much human input. For a normal sewing machine, you need to properly position the clothing in the right area, have the skill to properly move that clothing as the machine is running at the correct pace, and know exactly how to tackle the problem you are trying to fix, whether it’d patching a small hole in a piece of clothing or an extremely large tear. For our autonomous sewing machine, the user would have a screen to select what they wanted the sewing machine to do. For example, let’s say there was a hole in a shirt that you wanted to patch. You would place the shirt into the machine and select that you wanted to patch a hole. The sewing machine would then scan the shirt to find out exactly where the hole was and it would patch it using the appropriate colors. This eliminates the need to have experience sewing as the machine would do everything for you with minimal error. This is especially needed nowadays where sewing is a bygone hobby. Most people belonging to the Gen Z group have never even seen a sewing machine and for small tears in clothing, just throw the entire thing out; giving them zero experience and knowledge about sewing. This kind of innovation is only made possible with advancements in scanner technology. A big part of our sewing machine is that it can repair these items of clothing without the user needing to do any work. The scanner finds the tear, positions the machine in the correct position, and uses the correct coloring to have the most concealed stitching possible unless the user desires otherwise. So much can go wrong with the stitching if the clothing isn’t positioned correctly and accurately, so using scanner technology and computer input will get the best possible result.  When thinking of where we could innovate something for this project, we initially looked at the education system. After all, we are all college students. Initially, we looked at holograms that could be used for education, allowing a more hands-on and realistic experience of things that normally teachers would show on screens or only be able to explain theoretically. However, this concept is extremely difficult to execute. One of our main inspirations was Disney, but even their model wasn’t fully fitted out. We then turned to something we all had in common; we all wore clothes. A very normal thing, yes, but we realized that once one of our clothes was damaged, we just threw it out and bought completely brand new clothing, wasting a lot of money for even the smallest of tears. We knew that people could sew to fix those, except we didn’t know anyone who knew how to. There, we found our problem; people weren’t sewing. How could we solve this problem? Many people don’t get into sewing as it takes a considerable amount of time to learn, and without proper training, people could not only further damage the clothing they are trying to fix; they could also be hurting themselves when they make a mistake. We also thought about the time efficiency of sewing. While sewing machines have developed enough to where sewing doesn’t take that long, maybe a 30-minute endeavor, many people would much rather spend that time doing something else rather than attempting to fix some clothing that they could ultimately mess up. To that end, we thought, why not make the machine do all the work for the user? If the machine is doing all the work, that gets rid of the learning curve that comes with purchasing a sewing machine, a factor keeping many people from buying one. It also gets rid of the time problem. While the automatic machine is still going to take the same amount of time as sewing with a normal sewing machine, it allows the user to step away and use that time to do something else, rather than sit at the machine to sew. It also increases the success rate of good stitching. There is no human error that can mess up the stitching, which means people will always be happy with the results.  To build this, we needed to come up with how we were going to change the position of the stitching, either by figuring out a way how we could move the clothing or moving the needle and bobbin thread that sits in the shuttle underneath the clothing. To this end, we decided that it would be easier to allow the needle and shuttle to move while keeping the actual clothing still. To accomplish this, we took inspiration from a 3D printer, as those can change the height of the feeder of the 3D printer, or in our case the needle of the sewing machine, horizontally, vertically, and longitudinally. This is further explained in the technical description. The cost to make this is very similar to that of a 3D printer. The actual price to make a 3D printer is around $700, and our product should be very similar in price. It would use the same metals as a 3D printer, those being aluminum, stainless steel, and titanium. The magnets used in the machine to hold down the clothing would be a couple of dollars for customers to buy, but for the manufacturers, that being us, would only cost around $1 or less. The cost of making the needle and its housing, along with the shuttle would be offset from the total cost of manufacturing as it is largely the same cost to make the feeder for a 3D printer, the part that is being replaced by the needle, its housing, and the shuttle. However, that $1300 manufacturing cost isn’t very honest, as it does not take into account how manufacturers can get the materials much cheaper than average consumers as they buy them in bulk. For the average person to be able to put together something like this, given all the parts, it would take them a week or more. But, as the manufacturer, we have factories that can mass-create the parts and put them together, bringing the time to create this machine from over a week, to being able to make a large quantity of them in a given workday. Market Competition and Failed Innovation SewBo                A company that approached automation within the sewing industry through a robotic arm capable of moving any fabric that has been imbued with a water-soluble stiffener through suctions was because of “The difficulties robots face when trying to manipulate limp flexible fabrics” Therefore, applying the water-soluble stiffener would solidify the fabrics allowing for easy manipulation of the fabric. This also can be easily removed with the application of hot water. Their stiffener can easily be recovered after use. The Sewbot              Using CNC Technology software automation, an Atlanta-based company, has developed the Sewbot, which is a fully automated garment-producing machine. Recently, they partnered with Tianyuan Garments, a Chinese company, to establish a fully automated T-shirt production line in Little Rock, Arkansas. The Sewbot can produce one T-shirt every 22 seconds, resulting in 800,00-0 T-shirts per day for Adidas. With complete automation, the personnel cost for each T-shirt is approximately 33 cents, making it difficult for even the cheapest labor markets to complete. While this development signifies American Technology competing with and potentially replacing Chinese jobs, The factory in Little Rock will only create around 400 jobs, significantly fewer than the traditional garment manufacturing methods would require for such a high production volume.  Our Spotlight         An automated sewing machine is typically geared towards streamlining and optimizing the manufacturing process by handling repetitive tasks with high speed and precision. These machines are typically equipped with machine vision and robotics to cut, sew, and assemble garments with minimal human intervention. They are programmed to operate continuously and efficiently, enabling mass production of garments with minimal human intervention. They are programmed to operate continuously and efficiently, enabling mass production of garments at a rapid pace. On the other hand, our goal is directly focused on the repair and maintenance of already-produced clothing. Our product comes with additional features such as thread tension adjustment, stitch selection, and pattern recognition aimed to assist users in fixing any type of damage in clothing or other fabrics, to be user-friendly, versatile, and easily usable. If the individual desires to address a specific issue without extensive sewing expertise they would be able to come to our product and operate it effectively The Intended Market          Industry manufacturers, garment production, and your everyday person who might not want to throw away a damaged clothing piece. With thorough market research, this product might be applicable in all the previously mentioned criteria. What is more worrying is how to effectively enter said market, there should be multiple aspects of consideration; such as consumer demand, through which we will need to conduct quantitative data analysis of our impact on the market, sales figures, and website traffic. Using kiosk technology provides us opportunities in direct-retail markets, where companies like Macy’s, Zara, Marshals, and Nordstrom could offer our technology in their stores increasing their targeted consumers into diverse demographics. This would enable us to be more differentiated from our market competitors, while still engaging in the same playing field. While the machine itself will not be very profitable, as our production cost will be $700, and our market price for consumers to purchase will be at a $900 price tag, most of our company’s profits will solely be from the sale of our specialized threads which are only compatible with our sewing machine. These threads can easily be made at $0.50 a piece and sold at a 400% mark-up price of $4.50. TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION EXTERIOR SHELL           Designing the external shell of our automatic sewing machine to resemble the shell of a claw machine offers numerous benefits, particularly in enhancing child safety and overall usability. Taking cues from the sturdy construction and secure access points of claw machines, the sewing machine’s shell can be fortified with reinforced panels and durable materials to deter unauthorized access, especially by children. By incorporating locking mechanisms or secure closures, the shell ensures that only authorized users can access the machine’s internal components, minimizing the risk of accidents or damage. Additionally, integrating transparent plastic elements into the shell design allows users to monitor the machine’s operation, providing a sense of security and affirmation for the protection of their fabric. Furthermore, adopting interactive controls and child-friendly aesthetics reminiscent of claw machines enhances user engagement while reducing the likelihood of injuries from sharp edges or corners. Selling only the shell of the automatic sewing machine with the attached kiosk machine to retail markets introduces a novel concept that combines functionality with convenience. This approach allows companies like Macy’s to retrofit their existing sewing machines with a kiosk interface, enhancing their capabilities and user experience without the need for a full machine replacement. The shell, equipped with the kiosk machine, serves as a versatile add-on accessory dedicated to appeal to retail markets that can be easily installed onto compatible sewing machines. By offering the shell separately, manufacturers will only be able to access this aspect of our product, which will help differentiate it from those sold to regular consumers. Furthermore, selling the shell with the attached kiosk separately enables retailers to cater to different customer preferences and budget constraints, expanding market reach and appeal.  Designing the USER INTERFACE Kiosk machines often feature user-friendly interfaces designed for quick and easy interaction, the display can offer effortless navigation through stitching options and settings. This also will be enhanced by adding touchscreen technology to appeal to user engagement and simplify selection processes, Real-time visual feedback, akin to kiosk displays, aids users with stitch previews and troubleshooting guidance. Customizable settings cater to individual preferences, while multifunctionality extends the display’s utility beyond stitch selection, providing instructional videos and maintenance tips. With a sleek and modern design inspired by modern kiosks, the display seamlessly integrates into various environments, enriching the machine’s aesthetic appeal. By leveraging these design principles we can elevate user experiences, making tasks more accessible and enjoyable. This also allows for control of various aspects of the stitch settings, specifically the type of stitch desired and what type of sewing technique is desired such as a patch or a regular stitch. The screen that will be used in our model will be a 24-inch screen and most importantly touch enhanced for users to select the option that caters to their needs. Processor and Motherboard The central processing unit and motherboard are from the core of the kiosk’s computing system. They handle data processing, manage software applications, and control the overall operation of the kiosk. For example, Mcdonald’s kiosk self-service machines only needed the Intel Core I5-470TE CPU at 2,70 GHz, with only 3.7 gigabytes of memory storage  Also as the requirement for memory storage isn’t as excessive we can do just fine with a 10 GB SSD, which will enable high-speed software updates, and add any changes required for the software aspect of scanning the positioning of the fabric. The Frame: Sewing machine design, featuring a plastic bed, integrated power switch, and wire connectors seamlessly incorporated into the machine’s frame. The plastic bed, leveraging the lightweight, nonmagnetic material and customizable nature of plastic, offers enhanced maneuverability and fabric control while maintaining stability during sewing. Integrated within easy reach on the bottom corner of the frame, the power switch optimizes user convenience and safety, Furthermore, wire connectors, embedded directly into the frame, ensure reliable electrical connections, simplifying assembly and enhancing overall reliability. Importantly, housing the controller within the main body protects against external elements, such as dust and debris, while also aiding in efficient heat dissipation generated during the printing process. Additionally, this location enables better management of wiring and cables, contributing to smoother operation and easier maintenance of the sewing machine over time. The inclusion of a screw on the side of the sewing machine, which, when opened, allows for the insertion of desired threads, offers both convenience and practicality to users. This feature showcases the process of thread selection and casually indicates how third-party threads won’t be compatible with our product. While openly enabling users to quickly and easily switch between different thread types or colors without the need for complex adjustments or disassembly. Moreover, the accessibility provided by this screw facilitates effortless maintenance and repair of the sewing machine- Users can easily access the internal mechanisms and components, such as the bobbin case or tension discs, for cleaning, lubrication, or troubleshooting purposes. By incorporating this user-friendly design element, the sewing machine enhances both usability and serviceability. The sewing mechanism is inspired by cartesian 3D printers, which can move along 3 linear axes- X, Y, and Z). Allowing the sewing needle to precisely hit the targeted area. In Cartesian 3D printers, the movement along the X, Y, and Z axes is typically controlled by stepper motors. Stepper motors are widely used in 3D printers due to their precise control, reliability, and affordability. These motors could be directly applied to our automatic sewer similarly. The X-axis motor is responsible for moving the needle head horizontally along the X-axis. Mounted on the printer’s frame and connected to a belt the movement of the sewing head. The motor receives commands from the machine’s controller, instructing it to move the head to specific positions with precise accuracy.  Similar to the X-axis motor, the Y-axis motor moves the needle horizontally along the Y-axis. It is also mounted on the frame and connected to a belt that drives the movement of the print bed. Like the X-axis motor, the Y-axis motor receives commands from the controller to move the machine to the desired positions. The Z-axis motor controls the vertical movement of the needle head. It is located at the top of the of the sewing machine and connected to a screw mechanism that raises or lowers the print head. The Z-axis motor receives commands from the controller to adjust the height of the head, allowing for the layer-by-layer incineration of fabric threads during the repair process. (Florian, D. Building a 3D Printer: Stepper Motors. Dr. D-Flo.) The motors Operate by converting electrical pulses from the controller into incremental movements of the motor shaft, allowing for accurate positioning of the needle or bed. Additionally, stepper motors have torque, meaning they can hold their position without the needle for continuous power, which is essential for maintaining positional accuracy during the repairing process. There will also be two additional X and Y motors on the bottom to move an electromagnet on the bottom whose purpose is to move a steel-plated bottom which is made to hold the second thread mechanism and move around freely in 2 dimensions. There also are 4 magnetic pieces designed as clips not to be confused with the Steel-plated holder meant to hold the fabric in place.  The Laser Technology   In our sewing machines, laser distance sensors are invaluable for enhancing precision and efficiency in the sewing process. These sensors utilize laser technology to accurately measure distances between the fabric, the bed of the sewing machine, and the needle. By emitting a laser beam towards the target fabrics and analyzing the time it takes for the beam to reflect back to the sensor, these devices can determine distances with high accuracy. This capability enables a range of applications; including measuring fabric thickness, detecting fabric alignment on the bed, and ensuring proper needle positioning.  Combining laser distance sensors with our already-established kiosk machines can revolutionize the sewing experience. As users approach the kiosk and place their fabric, the laser sensors spring into action, detecting the fabric’s presence and measuring its thickness. Simultaneously, the kiosk’s display screen illuminates with step-by-step images or animations guiding users on how to position the fabric correctly on the sewing machine’s bed. This real-time guidance ensures that users align their fabric precisely before sewing repair begins. Moreover, the laser sensors provide immediate feedback on fabric alignment and thickness, allowing the kiosk to automatically adjust the sewing machine settings for optimal performance. If any deviations are detected, the kiosk can alert users and suggest corrective actions, ensuring error-free fabric placement. By seamlessly integrating visual instructions with laser precision, this system streamlines the sewing process, reduces errors, and empowers users of all skill levels to achieve professional-quality results with ease.  The Magnetic Clips  Magnetic clips are a game-changer, offering a secure and efficient method for holding clothing pieces in place during the sewing process. Their strong magnetic force ensures a firm hold on fabric layers without causing any damage or leaving behind unsightly marks. Whether it’s garments, hems, cuffs, or seams, magnetic clips provide versatility, making them suitable for a wide range of sewing tasks. What makes them particularly appealing is their accessibility- easy to apply and remove with just a touch, making them perfect for users with limited dexterity or mobility. Unlike traditional sewing pins or clips, magnetic clips lie flat against the fabric, minimizing interference with the sewing machine’s needle and allowing for an uninterrupted stitching process.  This will go hand in hand with the previously mentioned Laser system, as it will indicate on the bed of the sewing machine where to precisely place each magnetic clip.  Conclusion So much money is being wasted every year by people throwing away perfectly good clothing just because of tears and holes that they are unable to fix. Those who attempt to repair these clothing are often put off by the process of sewing, noting how sewing is a skill that takes a long time to properly learn, and without that skill, they risk damaging the clothing they are trying to repair, and injuring themselves through improper use of a sewing machine. Our sewing machine offers a great solution to this. With it being automatic, the machine does all the work, eliminating the risk factor of injuring the user or damaging the clothing, getting rid of that learning curve that drives so many away from sewing, and allowing people to better allocate their time doing other tasks while the machine is fixing their clothing. Although challenges such as competition from other manufacturers and initial costs are high, our design can offer an innovative solution to the clothing waste problem, and over time, can generate large profits from clothing material sales and other products centered around the automatic sewing machine. The future of sewing is here, and this power of automation coming together with sewing machines can become as impactful to the world as the first sewing machine was.    References Admin, S. (2024, May 5). How did the Sewing Machine Impact the Industrial Revolution?. Industrial Embroidery Machines & Sewing Equipment Suppliers. https://www.stocks.co.uk/blog/how-did-sewing-machine-impact-industrial-revolution.html#:~:text=The%20sewing%20machine%20shifted%20the,factories%2C%20increasing%20their%20family’s%20income.  Florian, D. (n.d.). Building a 3D Printer: Stepper Motors. Dr. D-Flo. https://www.drdflo.com/pages/Guides/How-to-Build-a-3D-Printer/Stepper-Motor.html Specs of a McDonald’s kiosk in m […] “Group Engineering Proposal Essay”

Technical Description Self-Reflection EssayTechnical Description Self-Reflection EssayMahir ShahriarWriting For Engineering 21007Prof. Sara Jacobson Coming into this assignment, I thought that it was going to be a breeze. I knew that we had to break some technological item down and describe each part. I had somewhat recently built my PC. I knew each of the parts, what they did, how they worked individually, how they worked together. This assignment should have been a breeze, but there were some slight hiccups.For starters, I did not end up doing the Technical Description on a PC. Rather I did it on a newly acquired interest: mechanical keyboards. I had initially started the Technical Description with my PC. I even used it when I submitted my first draft. However, as I continued to work on it, I realized there were just way too many components in my PC. Even if I had excluded all the optional components, there were still going to be at least 15 or 16 components that I needed to break down. That was a lot and would have probably taken me ages to do. In order to save time, however, I decided to switch to keyboards, as they did not have nearly that many components. My issue came in the timing of when I switched my topic. When I switched my topic, more than half the time between the submission of the first draft and the due date of the final draft had elapsed, meaning I had given myself barely enough time to make a new Technical Description from scratch. I did not even have a first draft done for a keyboard. However, I did learn that there will be setbacks like this in my academic career that I just needed to find the best to of going about it, and that I should be prepared to take the necessary measures not just in my academic time, but also my professional career as these setbacks can occur.This assignment wasn’t all bad, however. I was able to gain insight into the history of keyboards and how they came to be. Also, in the search for images to put for the different keycap set designs, I ended up finding a keycap set that I really liked, a design that stood out to me, that I actually ended up ordering for my personal keyboard at home, so at least I was able to gain something that I could treasure for years to c […] “Technical Description Self-Reflection Essay”

Technical Description Technical Description Final DraftMahir ShahriarWriting for Engineering ENGL 21007Professor Sara JacobsonCity College of New York Outline ⦁ Introduction⦁ Body⦁ Casing⦁ PCB (Printed circuit board)⦁ Plate + Stabilizers⦁ Gasket⦁ Switches⦁ Keycaps⦁ Conclusion⦁ References IntroductionIn this day and age, keyboards are an essential part of everyday life. Keyboards are how we type on computers and devices, with most jobs nowadays requiring proficiency in typing. While it has become an integral part of our everyday lives, many people don’t know how this technological innovation came to be. The modern-day keyboard stems from the typewriter. The typewriter, created by Christopher Latham Sholes, alongside Samuel W. Soule, Carlos Glidden, and John Pratt, was a machine that would allow people to hit keys on a machine that would print those letters onto a sheet of paper. Sholes and the other inventors also set the standard on typewriters to follow the QWERTY format, the format of how the letters on our keyboard are arranged today. At the time, the typewriter did its job, it allowed people to print words onto paper to record them effortlessly. However, the age of computers was upon us, and people needed a way to input information into that computer. To this end, they modified the design of the typewriter. Instead of typing things onto a piece of paper, you would type stuff onto the keyboard and the computer would record and process that information. That is when keyboards started gaining popularity, with the IBM Model F standing out in particular during the 1980s for its loud and clicky spring-key switches. Although keyboards are widespread in our daily lives, many people don’t know the different components of a modern-day mechanical keyboard or what they do. Figure 1: Remington Standard typewriter Figure 2: IBM Model F Keyboard Parts of a Modern-Day Mechanical Keyboard ⦁ CaseThe outermost layer of the keyboard is known as the case or casing. The casing serves as the home for the keyboard. Its main job is to protect the PCB, Printed Circuit Board, or the brain and functional part of the keyboard, from any damage from external factors. Most keyboard cases are made of ABS plastic, but they can be made out of almost any material as long as it can protect the PCB, with popular materials being aluminum, carbon fiber, brass, and even wood. With that in mind, most people look to the design and material of the case mainly for its aesthetics as opposed to how well it can protect the PCB, as there aren’t many things that can damage the keyboard PCB through the case that would occur in everyday use of it. Figure 3: KBDFans Tofu 84 Aluminum Mechanical Keyboard Case (Grey)⦁ PCB (Printed Circuit Board) The PCB of the keyboard acts as the brain of the keyboard. It contains all the electronics, conductors, and circuits that take the inputs from the switches and turn them into electrical signals for the computer to process. These PCBs are normally made up of glass fiber with traces of copper. The switches of the keyboard are attached to the PCB to allow the PCB to read the keystrokes. In most cases, the switches are soldered onto the PCB for stability, but in recent times, people have been using PCBs where they can freely swap switches without the need to solder for more customizability. Figure 4: DK 4 Professional Keyboard PCB ⦁ Plate + Stabilizers The plate of the keyboard is used for stability and support for the switches. It gets aligned with the switches and PCB and the switches are clipped into the plate before getting soldered onto the PCB. This allows each keystroke to be more consistent and accurate while giving some protection to the PCB from small dirt and debris that could fall between the keycaps. The stabilizers also clip onto the plate and get soldered onto the PCB like the key switches, however, they serve the same purpose as the plate, they help stabilize and improve the consistency of the bigger keys, such as the space bar. Figure 5: 60% Aluminum Top Plate ⦁ Gasket The gasket is like a second layer to the plate, although its job is mainly for protection rather than stability. The gasket protects the internal parts such as the PCB from dirt, water, drink, and other spills or messes that could find their way into the keyboard and damage the parts; however, gaskets are not mandatory and are often not used as many keyboard connoisseurs practice keeping their keyboard station clean and tidy and try to keep anything that could damage the internal components away from that space. These are often a layer of rubber placed above the plate. ⦁ Switches Switches are by far the most important part of a mechanical keyboard. They determine the feel, sound, and response of the keyboard during use. They can send keystrokes to the PCB through the crosspoint, by closing the circuit on the PCB which sends the signal to the computer, which allows the keyboard to even function as a keyboard. The parts of the switch all have their purpose: the upper housing is the part of the switch that gets attached to the keycap, the stem is the part of the switch that physically moves down when pressed to activate the contact, the crosspoint as mentioned before closes to the circuit to send the signals to the computer, the spring puts pressure on the keycap when pressed to allow it to return to its original position and the housing base is what gets snapped into the plate and soldered into the PCB. These switches are where people go crazy over preference. There are many styles of switches, such as clicky, linear, tactile, and creamy switches. All of these terms refer to the response or feedback in feeling that each of the switches gives to the user when typing, giving people full control of their typing experience. For example, clicky switches give an audible click sound when compressed and have a slight bump when pressed down, while tactile switches have that slight bump but lack that ‘click’ sound from a clicky switch, and a linear switch lacks both that bump and sound. Figure 6: Standard Mechanical Switch Build⦁ Keycaps Keycaps are the physical parts of the keyboard that our fingers touch when we type. They are attached to the top housing of the switch. It pushes down the stem of the switch which sends the signal through the crosspoint into the PCB to allow our computer to read it. Keycaps are mainly preferential. They are mostly made from either Polybutylene Terephthalate (PBT) or Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS), with PBT being much more durable than ABS, making it the much better and popular choice; however, keycaps can be made with almost any material for the same reasons that the case can be made of almost anything. If the keycaps are made with ABS or PBT, they can be either single-shot or double-shot, with single-shot being made from one layer of plastic, and double-shot being made of two layers of plastic molded together., with double-shot PBT being the best and most popular option due to the high durability and quality. Most of the preference for keycaps comes from their feeling stemming from the material they are made of, their shape, and most importantly their design. Their shape places a small preferential role, with mainly the height being a thing of concern for some. There aren’t any tangible differences in performance for the different shapes of keycaps, but theoretically tall keycaps should take longer for the switch to react to, but any differences are negligible. The main aspect of customizability comes from designs, as there are thousands of keycap set designs and hundreds of new ones being designed every month. Figure 7: Difference Between Three Most Popular Keycap Shapes Figures 8, 9, 10: Different Keycap Sets DesignsConclusion For something so intertwined with our daily lives, it is surprising to see how many people are unaware of the components that go into the keyboard they use daily. The evolution of the modern-day mechanical keyboard from its conception as a typewriter that needed to be adapted for the age of computers is remarkable, and yet the two are incredibly similar. Nowadays, most keyboards are very similar, with the difference and each of the parts coming down to the personal preference of the user to give themselves their perfect typing experience. ReferencesDas Keyboard Staff. (2024, January 12). All the parts of a mechanical keyboard explained. Das Keyboard Mechanical Keyboard Blog. https://www.daskeyboard.com/blog/parts-of-a-mechanical-keyboard/ Squashy Boy. (2019, June 9). Building my first custom keyboard. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgfLKKPKXxA Hypyo Tech. (2022, January 29). How to build your first custom keyboard! (on a budget). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm1DVbyeDiI Wikimedia Foundation. (2024, March 27). Christopher Latham Sholes. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Latham_Sholes#:~:text=Christopher%20Latham%20Sholes%20(February%2014,typewriter%20in%20the%20United%20States. NIHF inductee and typewriter inventor Christopher Sholes. NIHF Inductee and Typewriter Inventor. (n.d.). https://www.invent.org/inductees/christopher-sholes Figure 1: Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. (2024, March 7). Typewriter. Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/technology/typewriter#/media/1/611749/210840 Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. (2024a, March 7). Typewriter. Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/technology/typewriter Figure 2: IBM PC keyboard. (2024, March 27). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_keyboardFigure 3: Tofu 84 aluminum mechanical keyboard case (grey) (KBDFans). mechanicalkeyboards.com. (n.d.). https://mechanicalkeyboards.com/shop/index.php?l=product_detail&p=8481Figures 4, 5, 6, and 7: Das Keyboard Staff. (2024, January 12). All the parts of a mechanical keyboard explained. Das Keyboard Mechanical Keyboard Blog. https://www.daskeyboard.com/blog/parts-of-a-mechanical-keyboard/ Figure 8: Amazon.com: JSJT Custom Keycap-keycaps 60 percent suitable for GK61/GK64/RK61/Anne /alt61 mechanical keyboards 71 key with Japanese font set OEM profile PBT keycaps with Keycap Puller (plum blossom keycaps) : Electronics. Amazon. (n.d.). https://www.amazon.com/JSJT-Keycap-Keycaps-Suitable-Mechanical-Keyboards/dp/B09L1BCFV3 Figure 9: Amazon.com: PBT Keycaps 132 Keys, great wave off Kanagawa Japanese keyboard keycaps, 5 side dye-sub custom Keycap set, cherry profile keycaps for Cherry Gateron MX switches mechanical keyboard US and UK layouts : Electronics. Amazon. (n.d.-b). https://www.amazon.com/Kanagawa-Japanese-Keyboard-Switches-Mechanical/dp/B0BJ1H33DM Figure 10: Galaxy PBT KEYCAPS. kineticlabs.com. (n.d.). https://kineticlabs.com/keycaps/polycaps/ga […] “Technical Description”

Lab Report AnalysisMahir ShahriarENGL 21007Writing For Engineering          In recent years, we have seen a massive increase in the power and use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Around 30 years ago, AI research existed, but it was very much not making progress. This was mainly due to the lack of advancement in both hardware and software. We just did not have the materials needed to be able to make it better. However, in the recent 20 years, many advancements in computer chips, microprocessors, neural links, and other hardware and software have allowed AI research and development to flourish. We live in an age where AI is available for anyone who has access to a device. However, one flaw that AI has had in the past was emotion recognition. AI was limited in that sense, which made it difficult to be utilized in settings such as healthcare, marketing, and humanoid robot development. All of these fields require that the AI gather information about the emotions being displayed, and use them to make the best possible decision. Luckily, lots of research has gone into emotion recognition over the past couple of years, and many advancements have been made. With the topic of emotion recognition in AI in mind, I chose to analyze the lab report, “Emotion Recognition and Artificial Intelligence: A Systematic Review (2014-2023) and Research Recommendations” by Smith K. Khare, Victoria Blanes-Vidal, Esmaaeil S. Nadimi, and U. Rajendra Acharya. This lab report extensively goes over the current research done on emotion recognition in AI, while also giving insight on how future research could be done. This lab report somewhat follows the general structure of lab reports as shown in Chapter 19 of “Technical Communication” by Mike Markel but deviates from it during two of the main sections and I will be analyzing each of the elements to see how the format affects the narrative of the lab report.Title         The title of the lab report is fairly simple. “Emotion recognition and artificial intelligence: A systematic review (2014-2023) and research recommendations. This title is both precise and informative enough about what the lab report is about which makes it easy for researchers can see what exactly is contained in the lab report. From the title, we know that the report covers a review of past research from 2014 to 2023 on emotion recognition in artificial intelligence.Abstract         The abstract of a lab report summarizes the entire lab report in a short, few sentences.  It is meant to parallel the structure of the lab report. The type of abstract given in this lab report is a descriptive abstract, which only states the topics that are being covered in the report as opposed to an informative one, which covers the major findings, results, and conclusions. This type of abstract makes it so that if a researcher wanted to use this report, they would have to read through the entire report to find out the major conclusions. While normally, this would be a turn-off, it makes sense why the writers chose a descriptive abstract over an informative one. This report is more of a compilation of all the past research from the years 2014-2023. If they did an informative abstract, the abstract would have had to summarize each of the studies used in this report, which would have been lengthy.Introduction         The introduction of this report brings into context of why emotional recognition in the application of AI is important. It talks about the uses it has in healthcare, such as studying psychological and neurological disorders, and physiological conditions, and to evaluate the extent to which the human brain reacts to some stimuli. It then also goes on to introduce some concepts that are relayed in the entire report, such as Paradigms of emotions, Discrete Emotions Theory, and Multidimensional emotions theory. These topics are the basic foundations of the studies used in the report, so the introduction proficiently goes over them to allow the reader to fully understand the entirety of the report.Methods and Materials         This report styles its “Materials and Methods” section a bit differently. Because this report is a compilation of past research studies, instead of having a methods and materials section, this part of the lab report is broken down into many subsections that all talk about the different forms of data, data collection, and data selection. Each of these subsections is one of the previously mentioned forms of data, and the reason these were put here instead of a methods and materials section is that these are the methods of data collection and selection employed by the different lab reports that were used to compile this one. First, it talks about how the different lab reports got their information, through the use of subsections explaining the different methods such as Questionnaires, and the physical and physiological signals picked up by the AI such as speech, facial expressions, and Electroencephalogram (EEG) along others. The report then goes on to briefly discuss the automated emotion recognition systems and how they work, and what data they can read and find. Most of these automated emotion recognition systems get their information from the eyes, brain, heart, skin, and face, and this data is generated from our body’s reaction to stimuli. It then goes in-depth about the way of filtering and sorting that information to be as precise as possible.  Results         The section that would be the results section isn’t there. Rather, this section is replaced with several subsections. The first subsection is the motivation and highlights of this review study, where it talks about the failures in previous studies where most failed to follow Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, failed to cover challenges in research, or only focused on one type of signal data. Normally, discussing the faults and shortcomings of previous studies comes in the introduction, but I believe that it was not included in the introduction because of 2 reasons. The first reason is that the section before this, what was supposed to be the materials and methods section, talks about how all the studies got their information. It would be illogical to explain the shortcomings of the previous studies, without explaining what each of the studies utilized and could have utilized, as the reader would not understand how those shortcomings like only using data from one signal type would have such an effect. The second reason is that this report is a compilation of many different reports, if you explain the shortcomings of the reports previously trying to compile this research information before explaining what is in this report, it may confuse with the reader as they can come to believe that those same problems that plagued the previous reports also affects this one.         The next part of this section talks about the highlights and “results” of the study. The highlights of the study include the comprehensive use of many different datasets, how the review followed strict guidelines, how all the research they used was very recent, and how diverse the information was, using multi-modal emotion recognition (using different physiological and physical signals, paired with AI using machine learning and deep learning techniques). The study then goes on to talk about the “results”, which were the results of the individual studies and grouped with studies of the same nature, such as studies that used the same physiological signals as the basis of their study. These results include graphical data along with a summary of those pictures to help the reader understand what the actual results are.Discussion         Although the previous two sections deviated from what a normal lab report was to normally do, this section is much closer to what a discussion section in a standard lab report is than the previous two sections are to their standard counterparts. The discussion section is meant to put the data from the results into the context of the lab report and the reason for writing it. In this report, the discussion section uses the graphs and pictures provided with the data from the results and explains them. It groups up the studies based on the type of signal they were focused on and gives a detailed explanation of what can be learned from them. The report then goes on to give an overall discussion of automated emotion recognition systems, the main topic of this report, stating each signal type and its flaws and advantages. It then goes on to list all the different challenges faced when making the report, such as lack of data outside labs, the extensive testing of the available data making it hard for any new information to come, the lack of generalization within the methods, and signals of all the studies making it difficult to compare and get significant results. The report then goes on to give future recommendations and research directions by saying how automated emotion recognition should be used in the field to fully test and develop it, noting how it could be used in healthcare, environmental health, and assistance to humans in education, marketing, and business. Conclusion         The conclusion in this report is also fairly standard. A standard conclusion should summarize the main points of the report, the purpose of the research, and the findings. It also shouldn’t bring up any new information. This lab report’s conclusion does exactly that. It briefly goes over that this report was compiled due to the importance of emotion recognition in many different fields, and how deep learning models of automated emotion recognition are outclassing those of machine learning models. It also stresses the importance of transparency and exploitability to allow more people to utilize it and allow for more data to be gained for further research. ReferencesThe reference section does its job as a reference section. It lists the citations for each of the lab reports and studies used in this lab report. There is also an appendix stating the deep numerical data for each of the lab reports. This lab report gives us an insight into the research done on automated emotion recognition systems from the past 10 years. Due to this lab not being a typical lab, being a compilation of different lab reports and studies on automated emotion recognition systems, the lab report does not follow the standard format of a lab report outlined in Chapter 19 of “Technical Communication” by Mike Markel, but rather deviates from it slightly during the methods and materials and results section to compensate for the lack of the lab being a standard lab, adapting it to fit the style that a compilation of lab reports should have. Citations:Khare, S. K., Blanes-Vidal, V., Nadimi, E. S., & Acharya, U. R. (2024). Emotion recognition and Artificial Intelligence: A systematic review (2014–2023) and research recommendations. Information Fusion, 102, 102019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inffus.2023.102019 Markel, M., & Selber, S. A. (2021). Technical communication. Be […] “Lab Report Analysis”

Letter of IntroductionMahir Shahriar 200 Park Avenue New York, NY 10031 2/13/24 Professor Sara Jacobson City College of New York 160 Convent Ave New York, NY 10036 Subject: Letter of Introduction Dear Professor Jacobson, I am writing to you to share my journey and experiences in the world of engineering and computer science. My name is Mahir Shahriar, and I am pursuing Computer Science at CCNY. Computer science (CS), especially in recent times, has seen a massive influx of students since the pandemic and the transition into online learning/work. This mainly stems from the abundance of creators on TikTok and other social media platforms advertising how it had a “low” barrier of entry, made extremely high levels of money, and was relatively easy to work remotely from home. All things considered, CS is very compelling, but the reasons listed above are not why I originally chose to pursue it. Before high school, I was homeschooled. I stayed at home all day and learned nothing but math and ELA from my laptop, utilizing different websites such as Khan Academy and IXL. I had no need to learn anything else, homeschooling only required me to pass the New York State Exams. But all the time spent on that laptop would spark curiosity in me. How did the thing that I was learning everything from even work? What else could it do that I wasn’t aware of? During my free time, of which I had a lot, I spent a lot of it just looking at computers and robots on the internet. I even saw concept materials of Artificial Intelligence (AI), something that I would become almost obsessed with. In my mind, I saw AI as an artificial human, something that didn’t have the same biological body but could think and act in unison with humans. When I reached high school, my parents made the decision to bring me back to public school, a high school that specialized in engineering and architecture. It was there that I took my first CS class, a beginner class in coding and programming. The first project I had was to make a very crude chatbot, just a simple program that would ask certain questions and understand only a few responses, but it was my first experience creating something through the use of CS. Through this small project, I was able to conjure up so many different possible things that could be made with through coding, I felt as if I had the power of creation. It was here at this school that I was also introduced to other forms of engineering. Civil, aerospace, and mechanical; they showed it all to us in our freshman year. We had to choose one of these fields that we wanted to take specialized classes for in our later years at the school. I chose aerospace engineering; I was mildly interested in planes and I had a couple of friends who were doing it. While I did learn a lot from those aerospace engineering classes, those two years spent taking those classes were extremely stressful and difficult. The topics were very physics-heavy, covering topics such as Bernoulli’s Principle, aerodynamics, fluid mechanics, and propulsion. Coming to CCNY, I wanted to go back to my main interest in CS. From the very beginning, I was into AI, and in my senior year of high school, I started getting interested in human psychology. AI is known for its limitations. Most AI models are language models, they just use available data to find the most correct response. However, that never was equipped to deal with information that involved human emotion, biases in information, and general “irregularities” with the human race. My goal in pursuing CS was in hopes of advancing AI to a point where the AI could “feel” and “express” emotion, or as close as physically possible to that. I also wanted to find a way for AI to work around biases. So much of the information we digest has biases and hidden meanings. As humans, we are able to discern these biases and hidden meanings and make our own understanding of these things, but AI in its current state can’t, which just leads to misinformation as many people utilize AI language models such as ChatGPT that fall victim to the biases in information. I want to lead the charge in closing the gap between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence, to allow AI to see the hidden meanings, feelings, and biases presented in information to better help human society. My journey into engineering and CS was a strange one compared to most that I’ve heard, but I am determined to drive AI into a new age and will stop at nothing to make sure AI is as close to humans to be fully utilized by humans. Thank you for reading my introduction letter. Best, Mahir Shahriar Computer Scienc […] “Letter of Introduction”

Lab Report Analysis Self-ReflectionSelf- Reflection EssayMahir ShahriarWriting For Engineering 21007Prof. Sara Jacobson This assignment was the first big assignment we had in this class. We had to find a lab report on a topic that related to our major and our interests and write an analysis on it based on how it fits the standard format for a lab report. There were some ups and downs, but I think I did alright on this assignment, with definite room for improvement. One of my biggest mistakes was during the planning stage. When looking for a lab report I liked, I spent a lot of time reading lab reports and casting them aside as soon as I found a new one. When I got to the lab report that I used during my assignment, I was beyond tired of sifting through reports and had just picked that one knowing the general idea of what it was talking about and that I liked both AI and emotional psychology. It was only after I began working on the assignment, that I realized that the lab report wasn’t a normal lab report. It was a compilation of a bunch of them spanning 10 years. This made it so that the format of the lab report didn’t follow the standard format of a lab report as shown in the textbook, which just made it harder for me. Another problem I faced was time management. My schedule was packed with tests and projects, along with me getting very sick and bedridden unexpectedly, made it so when it came time to work on the final draft, I didn’t have much time and that time that I did have was being juggled with a lot of other things. While I did struggle through this assignment, the actual lab report gave me a large insight into the field that I wanted to go into. I was always into both psychology and computer science, and I wanted to one day in the future, contribute to some form of application of AI to help people with mental health issues and mental health research. This lab report gives an extensive overview of the previous research done in that field, which was very interesting for m […] “Lab Report Analysis Self-Reflection”

Self-Assessment EssayM […] “Self-Assessment Essay”

Research EssayMahir […] “Research Essay”

Peer ProfileMahir […] “Peer Profile”

reflection phase 3this […] “reflection phase 3”

RevisionI don’t […] “Revision”

Reflection 2I thought […] “Reflection 2”

Is it still useful to write?I believe writing is important. Even though I am very bad at writing, I think that people use writing all the time. In this day and age, articles are being replaced with videos, newspapers being shown by the daily news, and books being formatted into audiobooks. Yet, writing will never cease. Most sources of media today were at a certain in writing. However, I do believe that slowly but surely, many of the writing classes will cease. This class in particular has helped me better express myself in writing, but that betterment in my writing has positively affected my expression in speech as well. I believe that instead of classes like this that benefit peoples expression in writing, there will be instead classes that solely seek to positively affect peoples expression in speech and online. I don’t believe that in the future, traditional English classes like this will have much of a purpose. While I believe Writing is an important skill, I do not believe that classes in the future on this subject will matter so […] “Is it still useful to write?”

ReflectionThis class […] “Reflection”

Written Language and Literacy Narrative + Cover LetterMahir Shahriar English 110 Cover Letter Writing this essay forced me to truly reflect on my experience with language. For a long time, I hated language. Simply put, I was bad at it. In English, I never knew the right words and struggled with my vocabulary. I would often search up synonyms for words for my writing assignment (I’m doing it right now for this assignment) as I felt that the simple words, I knew weren’t able to convey how I truly felt. With my mother tongue, Bangla, it’s even worse. I do not know how to read or write it. I only knew how to understand it for a long time, and to an extent, even to this day. I only learned how to speak very simple words and phrases, and I can’t hold a full conversation without stuttering or not knowing how to say the things I want to say. Well, I guess the same thing happens with English. When writing this essay, I had to go back and think. ‘When was there a time when language deeply affected me?’ I knew that my narrative would have to be something about my struggle with Bangla; I always struggled to talk in it. So, I sat there, thinking about my experiences failing at Bangla, when I remembered the time when my problems with Bangla became clear to me. When my grandparents came to America. Yet, in thinking about all my experiences, I reflected on each of them. How I struggled through all of them, and what I learned from them. It truly made me proud of all the things I went through, and I learned from them. And when finishing the essay, I felt most content with what I had written. For the first time in a long time, I felt that I was able to properly explain how I felt in a piece of writing and that’s something I’m very proud of. My intended audience in writing this essay was obviously Professor Lobell and the rest of the class, but it could be read by anyone who struggled with balancing their mother tongue and its culture with English and American culture. The story I told in my narrative is something similar to what many bilingual children go through. They have two languages on their hands, and can’t balance them, choosing to pick one and focus on that alone, as I did. My message to them is to try finding a balance between them, as it makes it easier to speak to their family and others from their culture; and they can coexist with the American culture they live in. This narrative is an anecdote of a time in my life when I struggled with my language, Bangla. Whenever I read anecdotes, I feel connected to the writers and it brings a lot of emotion out of me, which I aimed to replicate by writing an anecdote. I wanted to use pathos in an anecdote to resonate with the reader to show that the struggle that bilingual kids go through isn’t unique to them and we all go through it. In the class, we read multiple texts and watched Safwat Saleem’s TedTalk; all of which talk about issues that people had with language, whether it be “broken” English used by immigrants, accents, or “Black” English. They all try to bring to light how language isn’t binary, how even in one language, there are multiple ways of using that language and every one of those ways is valid; and how their relationship with language shaped who they are. The experience I wrote about, shaped how I looked at language and communication as I felt the struggle of not being able to convey how I truly felt, similar to how many who speak with an accent or “broken” or “black” English. Mahir Shahriar English 110 Language and Literacy Narrative Summer is always a fun time for a young student. They don’t have school. Any homework? Any responsibilities. They can just spend the entire summer relaxing by themselves, playing games with friends, sleeping, spending time with family, but most importantly, not having to worry about homework being due. But for 6-year-old Mahir, summer was just a little bit different. His grandparents were coming home from their home in Bangladesh for the first time in his life, and he could not wait. The 6-year-old me was ecstatic. The last time I saw my grandparents was when I was 2, when my family visited Bangladesh. I didn’t even remember that time; I only knew that it had happened from old photos and the dates on them. I was told the news of them coming to live with us in May of that school year. It was only first grade, but I already dreaded going to school and was desperately waiting for summer to begin. The news only made me happier for the summer to begin. The night I was told, I ran around our apartment with joy, chanting “I’m going to see Dada and Dadu.” (Grandpa and Grandma) My mom chuckled at my excitement and told me that when they arrived, I had to talk in Bangla because they did not understand English. “All good”, I thought. I hear my parents talk in Bangla all the time. They even speak to me in Bangla. There won’t be a problem that my grandparents didn’t speak English because I understood Bangla too. However, in my little 6-year-old head, I did not piece together that understanding Bangla, just was not the same as speaking it. At the airport, three days after school had ended, I waited with my family. Some members of my extended family were there too, waiting for my grandparents. My maternal grandparents were there, ready to see my paternal grandparents for the first time in a long time. My mom’s younger sister and two older brothers and their families were also there, ready to help bring all the luggage home in their cars. I waited, so excited that I couldn’t keep still. I ran around, constantly saying to myself, “Dada and Dadu are coming!”, “Dada and Dadu are coming!”. My parents and maternal grandparents had to tell me multiple times that we were in a public space, to be quiet and calm down. Still, I was ecstatic and awaited the plane’s arrival. At 3:55 p.m. EST, the plane landed. As it was in the early 2010s, airport security gave my Muslim paternal grandparents a hard time as they tried to get through immigration and retrieve their luggage, extending the time I had to wait before seeing them. An hour and a half later, my grandparents finally made their way out. The state of euphoria I was in could not be described. I ran to them, going under the line divider rope that stopped people from going to the exit of immigration, hugging them until my arms went sore. “Mahir, balo aso?” my grandma asked me. I knew what that meant. ‘Are you good?’ for a direct word-for-word translation but it was just how you said, ‘How are you?’ in Bangla. “I’m good. I’m so happy you’re here.” I replied. But my grandma just looked at me, chuckling after ten or so seconds. “English busi na”, she told me. (I don’t understand English.) It was then I realized I had no way of talking to my grandparents. My mom reiterated that I had to speak Bangla. After that, 6-year-old me lost it. I was on the floor, bawling my eyes out, screaming, “I CAN’T SPEAK BANGLA. YOU DIDN’T TEACH ME.” Back at home, my mom explained to my grandparents that I couldn’t speak Bangla, but I could understand it. My parents would come in as my translator, translating everything I had to say to my grandparents from English to Bangla. While on paper this seemed fine, I hated it. I felt like I couldn’t properly connect to my grandparents. My grandparents would often just chuckle when I’d try talking to them, all while I knew they couldn’t understand me. They had flown all the way here from Bangladesh, and I had waited so long, just for our exchanges to be very awkward. I knew my grandparents enjoyed my company, but I was also aware that they felt disheartened by the fact that I couldn’t speak to them. I made it my goal that summer, to be able to speak Bangla with my grandparents. My parents had prioritized so heavily that I learned English to be able to communicate with people at school when I was younger. I’d often be sitting at the dining room table at breakfast, just reading the long, confusing words on the nutrition facts of the cereal box because my parents said it would help me read. This summer, I wouldn’t be doing that. Whenever my grandparents or parents talked in Bangla, I would try my best to listen carefully and repeat what they said. August rolled around, and by then I started mustering up the courage to speak in Bangla to my parents and grandparents. However, it did not go great. I could only say very simple phrases and everything I said was very broken, but I was able to get my point across. It motivated me so much, and by the end of the summer, I was able to answer my grandma’s first question from when she first landed, “Mahir, balo aso?” “Ami balo asi.” (‘I am good’- word-for-word translation.)  The problem I faced is actually a pretty common problem with children in immigrant households. Oftentimes, when bilingual children grow up, they tend to ‘pick’ one language; either their mother tongue or the language of the country they live in, in this case, English. However, in doing so, they lose connection with the other and its culture. Most commonly, they end up choosing English, causing them, like in my case, to barely know how to speak their language, and not even know how to read or write it, or just barely be able to do so. This language barrier also causes a rift in their connection to their family and culture. Oftentimes, families of the child feel neglected or disrespected when the child doesn’t speak to them in their native language and reflect the practices of their culture. It is where the term ‘whitewashed’ comes from. Children often adopt the cultures of “white” America and not their native cultures. In uncommon scenarios, the children pick their own native language and culture over English, causing them to be “behind” in their English and knowledge of American culture. This leads to a rift between them and the people they meet in school, at work; anywhere outside of their culture. They are often subject to discrimination and bullying at those places, due to the way they speak and their lack of knowledge about American culture. I hope that in writing this, bilingual kids who faced a similar issue to mine can understand the importance of building a balance between their native language and culture, an […] “Written Language and Literacy Narrative + Cover Letter”