Fawziyah Shamim
12/18/2020
ENG 21002: Writing for the Sciences
Professor Boisvere
Self-Assessment Essay
This semester was my very first semester of college and it was a strange one, to say the least. Graduating high school and starting college during a pandemic were not experiences that I had ever envisioned before, but I feel that these experiences have helped me self-reflect and focus on my academic journey more than ever before. Writing for the Sciences was a particularly important class for my learning, especially as a science student living in the midst of a global pandemic because my intended career field in scientific research fundamentally requires being able to spread scientific knowledge to others through writing. People all over the world are reluctant to listen to scientific evidence and as someone who is passionate about educating others with pure facts simply for their own benefit, I have made it my dream to pursue research and teach those who are willing to learn. So when I first enrolled in this course, my intention was to fulfill all expectations, not only for the professor, but also for myself. I wanted to come out as a stronger writer and gain skills that would provide me the means to write for the benefit of scientific advancement, which in turn is a benefit for all of humanity.
Before writing my Technical Description paper, I was honestly a bit nervous. It was my very first formal essay of my college career and I did not know what to expect. However, I gained a thorough understanding of the technicalities of the paper through Professor Boisvere’s explanations, and then it became much easier for me to start writing. I genuinely enjoyed writing that paper, especially since I found my topic interesting. I have always had a keen interest in weather, especially extreme weather occurrences such as hurricanes, so I chose to write about the dropsonde, which is a device that is used to measure the storm conditions of a hurricane. I felt that this assignment helped me enhance strategies for reading, drafting, editing, and self-assessment because I was focused on providing a clear and detailed description through the quality of my writing and the structure of my paper, rather than on a particular argument. I edited and revised my paper to satisfy the requirements of the assignment and to give myself reassurance about my ability to simply describe a technological device, which I feel is a fundamental skill for scientific writing.
While writing my Scientific Controversy paper, I found myself highly invested in the research process. I engaged with the learning objective of using various library resources, online databases, and the Internet to locate sources that were appropriate for my topic, which was the scientific argument regarding the use of aversion therapy. Although I can improve on this objective, I am glad that I had the experience of using outside sources in my paper since any and all forms of research require using outside sources to build a foundation of an argument and/or discussion. As I presented evidence for both sides of the argument, I worked to formulate and articulate a stance through my writing at the end of the paper after evaluating the research and their results. I personally found this assignment the most useful in the strengthening of my research paper writing skills because I was tasked with looking for useful and practical pieces of research that would accurately demonstrate the arguments within my paper, and would also facilitate my own ability to explain the research and articulate a stance. For example, I feel that prior to being tasked with this assignment and taking this class at all, I simply would have explained the general argument regarding aversion therapy without providing detailed reasonings behind each side of the argument. Now, I know that not only do I have to provide accurate and substantial reasoning, but I also need to explain each side in terms of how aversion therapy affects patients. After all, scientific controversies develop on the premise of how a particular scientific topic affects people and/or the world around us, so it is important to thoroughly explain the components of each side’s argument and their effects.
The Group Research Paper was definitely my most difficult assignment to complete. My group members Agsa, Adeia, and Khushi were all very cooperative and I thoroughly enjoyed working with them as individuals. However, I personally have always had difficulty implementing my own writing skills in combination with my group members’ writing skills while working on group projects. I feel that this paper helped me explore the course learning objective of developing and engaging in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes. My group members and I were able to brainstorm ideas and execute them in both our presentation and paper in a collaborative manner. We did this by assigning individual tasks, asking each other questions, and reviewing each others’ work. Overall, it was a very interesting and engaging process. However, I am planning to work harder on changing and improving how I work in collaborative group projects by adjusting my methods of writing in accordance to my group members’ methods of writing so that our papers can appear more coherent. While writing this research paper, I also worked on the course objective of strengthening my source use practices since our topic, which was the effects of marijuana use on teenagers, required extensive research from various peer-reviewed sources to properly establish the argument that the effects are indeed negative. While revising the paper, I worked harder to implement an IMRAD-style flow in the paper. I personally found it rather difficult to write the paper in the IMRAD-style while working as a group, but I plan to improve that skill since it is important to work collaboratively on research papers in the scientific research field.
One of my favorite aspects of this course was the use of the discussion board on a weekly basis. I truly enjoyed being able to share my thoughts on the topics of discussion or the assigned readings with the rest of the class. Reading my classmates’ thoughts through their discussion posts not only helped me gain a broader understanding of the topics at hand, but it also helped me engage with the learning objective of acknowledging others’ range of linguistic differences as resources so that I could draw on those resources to develop rhetorical sensibility. Having the opportunity to read and analyze other people’s writing gave me an idea of how my own writing differs from their’s and this has diversified my style of writing. I noticed this change in my writing while reading my technical description from earlier in the semester. I felt that my flow of writing and style while explaining certain concepts has now become more rigid and structured compared to the beginning of the semester. Furthermore, I feel that the questions that were asked on the discussion board helped me engage in genre analysis and multimodal composing to explore effective writing across disciplinary contexts and beyond. For example, the Discussion Board post from Unit 1, Week 3, where we were asked to evaluate Margaret Atwood’s piece on climate change, helped me analyze writing in terms of narrative and I learned how narrative imposes such a powerful impact on the meaning behind a writer’s words. The Discussion Board post from Unit 1, Week 4, where we had to differentiate between the target audiences of a formal scientific report and that of a New York Times Science Article, facilitated my understanding of how the context of a scientific piece is often based on the writer’s intended audience. This relates to the course learning objective of negotiating writing goals and audience expectations regarding conventions of genre, medium, and rhetorical situation, as I implemented my understanding of this objective from the discussion posts into my formal papers. For example, despite the fact that I had prior knowledge about aversion therapy, I still worked to write my scientific controversy paper for an audience that does not have any prior knowledge about this topic. Writing should indeed be adjusted in accordance to the target audience and I have learned to remind myself of this whenever I am writing.
I feel that the course title “Writing for the Sciences” can also be labeled as “Writing for the Humanities,” as this course has truly made me realize that writing for the sciences is not just a technical and scientific endeavor, but it helps further the development of humanity through the understanding of science. As strange as this semester was, it allowed to me reflect on the idea that my work as a science student alludes to the sciences and the humanities and I am utterly excited to see where my interdisciplinary interests take me in the future. In particular, I am excited to see how I will use my writing skills that I attained from this course in my future endeavors within the scientific field and for humanity.
This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
