3.1 Write effectively in multiple contexts within the discipline

Writing effectively is so important to be able to communicate ideas, data, and conclusions within biology. Throughout multiple classes in biology, I have been taught how to write formally and informally about scientific topics. It’s great to be able to share work and findings with others in the field, but I really enjoy writing for a general audience as well. In my sophomore seminar course, I was tasked with writing a review paper in a scientific context. It took weeks to conduct background research and create a conclusion supported by peer-reviewed papers. This paper took a lot of patience and trips to the library website for inter-library loans. I was happy with how I was able to pace myself, by setting goals for each section to be done in. I am really proud of the work that I put into this, and I know it would not have been as good if I hadn’t been practicing in my other classes before this. Here is a link to the final review, it is a bit of a longer read, but worth it.  As for general audience papers, I was not really able to practice with these until I had the scientific ones down. This makes sense though, because I needed to understand complicated jargon and staples of academic writing before I could be able to summarize and break it down. In my vertebrate physiology class, we were tasked with writing short general audience papers on a research article of our choosing every couple of weeks. I made it my goal to write papers that were a little funny because that is what I enjoy to read when learning about new topics. My favorite one was about thermoregulation in older individuals, and I even titled it “Old people can’t be hot”. Quite a funny assignment, but I actually got to discuss the important physiological concepts of thermoregulation and present current research in the field. Here is a copy of that assignment.