Throughout the course of this semester I have completed many assignments that have helped me grow as a scientific writer. The beginning of the course was intimidating because scientific writing often sounded extremely intellectual and long , but I later found that this course would further my interest in the sciences. The amount of intellectual freedom given by this course allowed us to explore scientific topics we cared about while improving are ability to write scientifically. This allowed us to explore and write about scientific topics related to our field. This paper will analyze how I have grown as a writer from this course and how I came to meet the course outcomes.

The first projects that will be examined are the summary and response papers we completed throughout the semester. These assignments were smaller papers designed to help us respond to various scientific articles related to our field of or intended field of study. The three topics the article reviews had to surround were a scientific controversy, a scientific paradigm shift and an article surrounding ethics in the sciences, which were all topics used by our larger assignments. My Paradigm shift article surrounded osteosarcoma being found in the ancient Pappochelys, The ethics article surrounded medical journals not properly documenting the connection between scientific researchers and the pharmaceutical industry, and the controversy article surrounded the anti-vaxx movements. Because these papers were really specific I was not used to the writing style. These assignments helped me improve my specific analysis writing because of their length. These assignments also gave me the opportunity to revisit and revise my work. These topics allowed me to explore my interests and the scientific world in depth. Revisiting my work later on helped me revise it with newly acquired skills but also a newly acquired perspective. I practiced revision and editing through these smaller works primarily.

The larger assignments also allowed me to explore my scientific interests while focusing on specific skills needed to write scientific papers. The skills I acquired through these larger projects allowed me to formulate larger persuasive, argumentative and informative pieces on the subject matter I chose. The first piece is the technical description and unlike the others this assignment required a relatively rigid structure. I chose to do my mechanical description on an X-ray machine and my Process description on the water cycle. Though the aforementioned topics seem simple enough research had to be done to create a substantially informative description. I also had trouble not making it a description of how it works and not a description of how to work it. The research wasn’t too extensive but I was still able to learn a good amount about both processes. The part I enjoyed about this project that I didn’t find in the other small assignments before it  was the peer review aspect of it. The input of others didn’t only help me choose what I wanted to do the technical description on but also taught me how to properly structure it as mine was a mess. Overall the technical description helped me with properly structuring my research and properly applying external feedback to my work.

My scientific controversy research paper helped me the most in terms of the course outcomes. The premise of this paper was to research a scientific controversy that pertains to your field of study and because my indented field is veterinary studies I decided to choose the animal testing for medical purposes controversy. This controversy intrigued me particularly because I didn’t have a pre-existing stance on the matter. Because of this, my research was vigorous and done with the intention of learning all about it. I usually approach controversy papers from a historical perspective so I dissected the controversy by learning about its history. The process was long but surprisingly fun and I came to the conclusion that animal testing in the sciences shouldn’t be completely eradicated ( because of its importance in animal and human medical breakthroughs) but it should be slowly phased out. In this paper I worked extremely hard to properly format my sources and used peer review multiple times for external feedback. Through analyzing other people’s work and my own work I was able to discern what my paper required. Lastly this paper helped me take a stance in this controversy and articulate that stance properly.

The last assignment in this semester was a group project. The collaborative aspect of writing has always been challenging for me as I like to work at my own pace but this project also helped me grow as a scientific writer. The group came to the conclusion that the project we were doing was going to be about eutrophication, which is the process by which excess nutrients (usually phosphorus and nitrogen) deposited into a body of water cause the body of water to essentially die as a result of egregious algae blooms. The purpose of this project was to propose a solution for this problem and my job was to explore the solutions that they proposed. Through my research I learned a lot about processes help the problem of eutrophication. The issue was complex because problems that should have a direct impact on the process seemed to have no effect and the information I gathered relating to the process of eutrophication was vague. The collaborative aspect of this project occurred when we convened and the others clarified what they meant by their proposed solutions. I personally felt dissatisfied with my work in this project because the proposed solutions to the problems didn’t seem nearly substantial enough and I still can’t find specific statistical data surrounding the project. This failure (in my opinion) isn’t a failure to achieve the course outcomes and my group was great in their representation of the issue but I hope this drives me to research more thoroughly in the future.

In conclusion My scientific writing has improved tremendously by striving to adhere to the course learning outcomes. Even if my execution wasn’t always perfect I feel like I have grown as a scientist along with my interest for my intended major. In the future I will use what I have learned in this class in the future.