Reflecting on my business writing class
Plus, my final portfolio from the course :)
One of the nicest things about my last quarter at UCLA was the lighter courseload I took, which allowed me to enjoy the non-academic parts of college so much more.
Besides taking a natural language processing course to finish up my data engineering minor and a Soviet cinema class just for fun, the last class I needed to graduate with my Business Economics degree was Eng Comp 131B — writing for business and social policy.
And it was quite enjoyable — the professor was very nice and chill, my classmates were all graduating seniors, too, and we laughed a ton together each week. It was a nice combination of being relatively fun and interesting, not that much work, and in the late morning, meaning I found myself looking forward to attending class.
Long story short, the class was designed to teach students the different writing “items” (I couldn’t think of a better word lol) that one might encounter in the process of entering or living in the business world.
In lecture, our professor shared how to create these different items and all the elements that go into it, followed by a student presentation regarding a chapter of the professional development book we read in tandem. In order, these different assignments were:
Professional email and memo
Executive summary
Resume
Cover letter
Opinion editorial (I was EXTREMELY proud of mine!)
Non-profit grant proposal
Final group presentation on a real company’s PR crisis
These assignments were quite interesting, and I did enjoy the runway we had in scope and material we could cover — any relevant topic was fair game for our work, and it was cool to see the different subjects my peers and I chose for each assignment. Plus, the conversations and group discussions we had in that class were quite fun, and dare I say even therapeutic.
The final thing to note about my professor is that she’s very particular about her formatting and proper citations, which I particularly struggled with throughout the entire course (lol). If you’ve read any of my articles before, you know I throw standard formatting out the window pretty much immediately, so a big part of the course was me learning to suck it up and format the way she wanted. She also kept insisting that there was no way that AI could properly cite in APA, but I learned pretty quickly that Perplexity is, in fact, quite good at doing so.
But that’s beside the point.
And so similar to when I shared my application responses to get into my upper-division economics research class, I figured I’d share my thoughts on the class and all the work I created for it for the following reasons:
It’s a great addition to my writing archive/portfolio, and something for me to look back on and read fondly later.
I love writing, and want to share my work with more people in the hopes of sharing wisdom in an entertaining fashion.
Alright, that’s enough of me talking. Let’s do this thing!
I just had the unfathomably amazing realization I can directly embed file attachments into my Substack articles, so reading my work for the class literally couldn’t be any easier. WOW THIS IS AMAZING!
Here is my final portfolio of work, which includes my email, memo, executive summary, resume (check out my in-depth guide on resumes here), cover letter, opinion editorial, and non-profit grant proposal. I’m particularly proud of my op-ed, so much so that I’m actually going to paste it into this article just for your enjoyment!
My opinion editorial:
UCLA Must Lead the AI Education Revolution by Providing ChatGPT Edu to All Students
As a UCLA student juggling coursework, internship applications, and many extracurricular commitments, I’ve experienced firsthand the transformative power of AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. These tools save countless hours each week, helping me debug code, find sources for writing projects, tailor study materials, and provide detailed tutoring on specific topics.
And yet, while peers at institutions like the entire California State University (CSU) system, UPenn’s Wharton School of Business, and Arizona State University (ASU) receive free access to these AI tools, UCLA students pay out of pocket for them or risk falling behind. This reflects a missed opportunity for UCLA to continue its leadership in the AI space, and it’s time to take the next logical step: provide free ChatGPT Edu for all UCLA students to teach responsible AI use, maintain academic competitiveness, and prepare Bruins for an increasingly AI-driven workforce.
UCLA has a long history of using technology in its education—the Internet was created on our campus, CLICC rents laptops to students, and many software services are provided for all students, to name a few. Our free access to these services, which include the full Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft 365, and Canva Pro, greatly enhances our educational experience and is crucial for our professional and creative pursuits.
Crucially, these initiatives reflect a clear philosophy of UCLA: when students have equal access to resources, innovation thrives. But currently, UCLA risks ending this equal access, as ChatGPT Plus is only available to those who can afford a $20/month subscription. These subscriptions operate on a Freemium model, where a free base model is available with a limited selection of models and queries per day. Plus subscriptions, for individuals, and Enterprise and Edu subscriptions, for organizations, allow unlimited queries, better models, file attachments, and Web Search for its users.
Fortunately, UCLA has already demonstrated its focus on AI integration—in 2024, UCLA hired the first Chief Data and AI Officer in the UC system, Chris Mattmann, formerly the Chief Technology and Innovation Officer at NASA JPL, to lead the effort to adopt AI on campus. That same year, UCLA bought a limited number of ChatGPT Enterprise accounts, and invited students and faculty to apply for accounts to explore AI applications in research and coursework.
While these programs are a great start, they remain limited in their scope—only a few selected students received Enterprise accounts, leaving most Bruins to buy their own subscriptions or remain dependent on free, more limited models. This lies in stark contrast with the CSU’s system-wide ChatGPT Edu rollout earlier this month, which provided 460,000 students with frontier AI tools for coding, data analysis, and personalized tutoring. The entire CSU system has nearly ten times the number of students as UCLA, showing us that a similar rollout at UCLA is very possible.
When adopting AI in education, there is a very natural concern: that AI tools not only encourage cheating, but also inhibit students’ learning. But banning these tools is not the answer—teaching students to use them correctly is.
UCLA’s role is to teach its students how to use AI ethically and responsibly to prepare them for an increasingly AI-focused job market. At Wharton, MBA students are provided free ChatGPT Edu access and take mandatory training modules on AI ethics and citation practices. Across the CSU, students have access to the AI Commons, which provides free AI training, tools, and certifications in prompt engineering and data privacy. UCLA should adopt this model too, requiring first-year students to take a class on AI ethics and responsible use.
These peer universities prove that campus-wide AI access is both feasible and transformative. At ASU, ChatGPT Edu assists in 400+ projects, from simulating medical patients for nursing students to automating grant proposal drafts. The CSU system provides the best example of ChatGPT Edu’s potential—they created an advisory board with dozens of leading tech companies, including Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia, and OpenAI, to identify AI skills needed in the California workforce to teach their students. At a university where nearly half of students are low-income and 30% are first-generation, this free AI access is especially powerful.
UCLA stands at a crossroads, and it’s time to embrace the future of AI use in education. Our students are now entering a world where AI skills are becoming more and more important, and it’s UCLA’s job to prepare them for that. As Deanna Needell, a UCLA mathematics professor and executive director of the UCLA Institute for Digital Research and Education, remarked, “AI has drastically changed the world and will continue to do so. As educators, we need to make sure our students have the best chance of helping this change be a positive one.”
It’s time to give our students equal access to AI tools, and let innovation thrive on campus.
Here are the presentation slides for my in-class discussion on our professional development book:
And last but certainly not least, here’s the final project I did with my two groupmates, Miles and Jane. The PR crisis we focused on PG&E’s involvement in the 2018 Camp and 2021 Dixie Fires, and I couldn’t be more proud of our work!
That’s all for now folks. See y’all soon, and best of luck if you’re taking the class yourself!
Best,
Dennis :)
Dennis!! Let me tell you - I am SO convinced your AI advocacy letter has the power to change minds and sway decisions at UCLA. Please, please send it to the Dean!!!
And I do love seeing these school projects. I’m sure people have told you, and also I’ll be one to say it; I think you strike a perfect balance between the wisdom-sharing and entertainment! It’s one of the best executions of it I’ve seen and resonated with! Pulling some inspo for the future, hope you don’t mind…
ALSO, love love love the mini trampoline break moment. My friend and I had thoroughly enjoyed :)