Goal 3.1 | Diego Sifuentes e-Portfolio Site

Today I will discuss my growth in writing effectively within multiple contexts after four years here at Longwood University. I will start off by discussing first my experience in writing a general audience paper. This was first made aware to me in BIOL 309, which is plant biology in the class I did a general audience paper on GMOs and how they were actually super helpful to plants and help produce so much more food. This general audience discussed that GMOs have a really bad reputation which should not e the case because they are able to feed so many people in the world. This paper did not use big words or scientific jargon in order for people without a scientific background could understand without getting confused. I will say that when I applied for an internship at virginia waterways they asked me to send them two writing samples. What i learned about myself in this course is that I can be very charismatic in my writing as well. In BIOL 326 writing the scientific paper was a little tougher, this was because you have to use proper jargon and scientific words. We induced the transcription factor dFOXO and saw how that had an impact on the PEPCK gene. This experiment was a lot harder and took a lot more labs to finish. Before this class I had never had to stay the whole 3 hours of lab. We first had to culture cells which was already more difficult than the first experiment. After PCR was conducted but not just that specifically qPCR which was new for me. I definitely had my writing skills enhance after taking this course. It was the longest paper I had written here at Longwood University. It was also the paper that had the most jargon and detail in the methods section. I wish that i could have done most of the experiment independently ut regardless it was great experience. In BIOL 488. We had to write a proposal which is a different type of writing and in this section it included a literature review. This proposal had to do with adding sunscreen stations throughout campus in order to protect students from UV radiations since Global warming is getting worse and becoming a bigger issue. The ozone layer could get weaker because of it and cause more UV to seep in and cause cancer. This was very interesting because I did not have to do an experiment except I had to find gaps in other people’s journal papers and explaining my reasoning using other people’s paper. This was definitely new to me but it showed me that I should not be scared of writing literature review papers because I use to be very scared to write them before. I have really grown as a writing as the four years have progressed. My grammar is getting better. Maybe not perfect but it has got a lot better. I have been able to expand my vocabulary and it has helped my procrastination and fear of long literature. This is definitely a skill I will continue to develop and use in graduate and in my future job.