During my Evolution class, I had to create a literature review on a given topic. My topic was on the coevolution of feathers and metabolism in dinosaurs. To create a literature review, one must scour the Internet to find any information that may add to one’s knowledge of the subject. Then, the information must be organized into general sections and included into a paper that makes sense to readers. This task was much harder than I initially thought it would be and I struggled a lot with it. I ended up with a literature review full of a bunch of semi-related papers, and it was difficult to correlate them with my thesis. I actually earned a decent grade on this assignment, but I left the class knowing that I could have done better. This paper is listed below.

In my Senior Capstone class, I’ve had a much better experience evaluating and interpreting data in scientific literature and other sources. In this class, each group is required to choose two recent scientific papers and give a presentation consisting of background, the paper findings, and a class discussion. My group recently presented a paper about a new treatment for acute myeloid leukemia. The presentation went really well. However, the constructive feedback that we received from the class prompted us to want to increase our eye contact with the audience, enhance the background information, and decrease our notecard usage. Our next presentation is on an evolutionary arms race between bees and flowers. I think that this presentation will better represent my ability to evaluate and interpret data in scientific literature and other sources, so I will include the link below once this presentation has been given.

Evolution Paper

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VAFRmloM1eRXvvtyU_al9U3gdZpqdQcs/view?usp=sharing

Pollination Presentation

https://drive.google.com/file/d/17WkbzN7hehmcC9gxjqIYbIyChQwjSenE/view?usp=sharing