In the biology program at Longwood University the incoming freshman start their 4 years with taking Biology 120- Integrative Biology. This class allowed for all students in the program to learn valuable skills that would be used throughout their 4 years of undergraduate. Even though I took biology in high school this course really filled in some gaps of knowledge that were missing and this course really catapulted me into what the next couple years would be like.

When I came to college I felt I had a solid starting ground of what biological principles were and I felt that I knew what I was going into with this program. I came to find out that I had more knowledge to gain and that I needed more skills than just the basics of what I learned in high school. In my first semester, I was not comfortable in my writing skills. Writing a lab paper and collecting data is a very integral part of the biology program at Longwood. This skill would help me further in my upper level classes. In 120 we were able to write components of a lab report and by the end of the semester my writing was stronger and more concise as can be seen in my project 2 results from the project on Brassica rapa.

The following semester I was able to take Biology 250-Intro to Genetics and Cell Biology. This class allowed me to expand on my knowledge from 120 and allowed me to gain better writing skills. In the course I was able to perform an experiment and write a full lab report on the experiment. This allowed me to gain skills in searching for good peer review articles and apply the knowledge from the articles to my experiment. This class allowed me to learn how to write about the research I conducted in a more concise fashion.

Biology 251- Introduction to Ecology and Evolution is the last class that prepared me to have a solid foundation for my future in biology. This class I was able to complete an experiment but I was able to complete a different kind of scientific writing style. In this class I completed an experiment on the tunneling behavior of ants. In this class I presented at Longwood’s Student Research Showcase and I was able to present a presentation along side my fellow classmates. This class allowed me to enhance my skills of searching for good peer reviewed articles and really challenged my ability to convey information in a meaningful but different way.

These are the courses that really built me a solid foundation of how to write and convey scientific information in a meaningful but concise way. This also helped prepare me for my upper level courses and because of them I feel like I have become a better writer.