In Biology classes at Longwood, I spent a lot of time reviewing scientific literature. The articles would either be used as a basis for research projects or used to stimulate discussion in class. In Bio 288, I had a lot of experience with discussing the data presented in scientific literature because every week the professor fostered a discussion based on a paper. I also had to write a review paper based on a topic of my choice and backed entirely by literature articles. That was the first time I wrote a paper in a biology class based solely on outside research instead of an experiment in the lab. The process was a little rough initially because it had been so long since I had to find so many useful articles and formulate an argument based on the results. It gave me a lot of useful experience and made it easier when analyzing literature articles in future classes.
Currently, in Bio 488, I am using scientific papers as the basis for a research proposal on the genetic link to Bipolar Disorder. I am comfortable with interpreting data to determine if the paper has information necessary to my proposal and I will continue to assess literature articles to further add to a literature review.