Jun Yan Wei Wu
Engl 21007
Ms. Crystal Rodwell
November 2, 2019

Date: November 2, 2019
To: President of the City College
From: Jun Yan Wei Wu
Subject: Transportation improvement

Purpose

The purpose of this letter is to emphasize a common issue that affects most of the CCNY students, the issue is about the buses at CCNY and the goal is to make it easier for students to track the bus by setting a departing time where the bus has to leave which will have to follow rigorously.

Background

At 145 Street station, the bus never comes at a specific time. For instance, students are more likely to confuse whether to wait for the bus or walk. I can wait for the bus, but that means the time I would be spending time waiting for the bus. It would’ve been the same if I spent the time waiting for the bus on walking instead, and since I don’t know if the bus will arrive in the next minute or the next 10 minutes this poses an issue. Some students can be running late due to a subway delay or unexpected problems that could have occurred and the student might not arrive at the time as he/she usually does.

Walking from the 145 Street subway station to the NAC building takes around 15-20 minutes and to get to the class is another less than a couple of minutes if your class is on the first floor and near the entrance. So it takes approximately 20 minutes minimum to get to your class. On the other hand, taking the bus will take around 2 to 3 minutes to arrive on the campus and another 5 minutes to get to class, depending on how far your class is it would take about 8-11 minutes. But, this will only happen if the student knows for sure that the bus will be heading out at a specific time. Sometimes the bus heads out when class has begun already.

An example of that is when it takes me around 15 minutes to speed walk to my class but this is different for other students. A friend of mine usually takes around 20 minutes to arrive at her class this is because she does not walk as fast compared to other students and it is hard for her to keep a fast pace. This is physically tiring for her but because of that fact that we don’t know when the bus arrives, she can’t just wait for the train and get late to class. This has happened to her before; her class starts at 8:30 so she waited from 8:00 to 8:10 for the bus and didn’t arrive so she proceeded to walk and rush to her class, barely making it on time.

Another example was when the train had several delays and in my first class, I had an exam so I couldn’t afford to be late. Normally I leave a 30 minutes time margin to get to my class, but I arrived at 145 street subway station 5 minutes before my class starts so I panicked and ran to my class; I got there 10 minutes late and the professor’s policy is exam starts 5 minutes after class starts, if you are late you will not be able to take it. I was lucky that the professor read my email that I sent an hour before class saying that I might be late due to a subway delay. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have allowed me to take the exam, in the end, I was mentally and physically tired because of the stress of missing the exam and the fact that I had to run to class. But if I knew that a bus will be arriving I could have waited.

Recommendations

The solutions that we might want to take a look are setting a schedule for the bus to leave at a certain time like at 7:40 to 8:10 there should be busses going back and ford at least 2 busses picking up every 10 minutes, next busses are scheduled to leave at 8:40 to 9:10, 9:40 to 10:10 this and so for following the same patterns 2 every 10 minutes. Students classes normally start at 8:00, 8:30, 9:00, 9:30, 10:00, 10:30… knowing that we can set the busses to be leaving out of the campus at 7:40 and pick those students whose classes start at 8:00. And keep the busses working until 8:10 for those students that classes start at 8:30, same with the 9:00 and the rest following the same system. This will give students an idea of when they should wait for a bus and when not to. The cost of this solution will not be that much since CCNY already has the bus drivers and busses, just an adjustment in the schedule. This solution will help students to know when is the time to wait for busses or when walking is the best option, and make busses more reliable since they are paying for the service.

Sincerely,
Jun Yan Wei Wu
CCNY Student

Self reflection

Jun Yan Wei Wu
English
MS. Crystal Rodwell
September 15, 2019

Self Reflection Essay
This assignment was not particularly hard but new for me. I had never done a memo before for any of my classes, so this was like a small challenge. I feel this small step I just did will help me to improve in the long run.
the examples we did during class was really helpful to understand what a memo is and what it should contain. It helped me to have a better idea of how I could write my memo. the exigence of this work was not just to have it done and get my grade, it was to learn and see how I can improve for future works.
One of the problems I found in my writing is that I do run-on sentences, I did not notice it at first was a peer of mine who pointed it out for me. He also gave me an example of what I could do to make it better, this helped me a lot for my final draft.
Another problem was that I did not prepare myself for class. I ordered my book late which arrived after we did our first draft. So in my first draft, I didn’t have a structure to follow making the work two times harder. This will teach me to order my books on time. Otherwise, I will be suffering from something that could be done just by following the structure.
The purpose of this assignment for me was to learn and be able to acknowledge it. Know what to do in the future if I encounter a situation that I have to write a memo for one of my superiors. Then, I could apply my knowledge from this work.
Overall, this work was a fun experience and I also learn something new on the way. Not only this but it helped me to find people that I can rely on, such as my peer review group maybe I can’t help them so much because it takes me time to understand what I am reading. I need to read multiple times to understand the idea of the reading. Which means, I need to do more readings and get more comfortable with it.