Lost in the maze of scientific writing... but slowly getting better at navigating!

 The hardest part of scientific writing for me is…

In going through Module 1, I really appreciated the constant reintroduction of the purpose of the module. My past laboratory experience is primarily from UROPing, and at times I felt as though I just went through the motions. However, in Module 1, between the lectures and the prelabs, the purpose of the experiment was constantly being reintroduced, and I appreciated the constant reminder to zoom out and see the bigger picture, rather than solely hone in on the individual labs. 


This big picture vision helped me approach the data summary with a general idea of how it should be organized, however, I still had a hard time connecting together all the different elements. I appreciated that the large task was broken into chunks and each of the sections was done over time. However, because of the spacing, I forgot what I wrote for some previous sections and feel as though I was redundant in many of the sections. I noticed this the most when editing the Data summary. A lot of the abstract bled into the introduction and background, and followed suit throughout the written assignment. While I do think there needs to be some continuity, I feel as though the dividers between different parts of the lab got fuzzy for me. In the homework assignments, I felt as though I recycled many of the same words and phrases. This blending is most likely also due to the virtual nature of the class. Each component of the lab doesn’t feel different because I am not physically going through the experiments and doing anything different. However, this online lab class is exceeding my expectations (thank you instructors!), so I personally need to adjust my strategy and approach to make sure each day in lab feels distinct. 


In the scientific writing process, I was the most surprised by how difficult creating figures and schematics was. I had initially thought that they would be the easiest part, but brainstorming what essentials to include in the figures was extremely difficult. I did appreciate that it made me think hard about what information is valuable and what isn’t. I personally feel as though I learned the most from making the figures, because they forced me to think critically about the experiment, as well as the data I obtained. The quote, “a picture speaks a thousand words,” embodies this idea the best.


Beyond the figures, I had a hard time getting into the writing itself. At the beginning of each homework assignment, I felt really lost and wasn't quite sure where to begin. There were times where I went in one direction, only to later learn that I did the assignment completely incorrectly. However, as time went on, summarizing my data, and communicating that analysis through words got better. I’m hoping that, with more experience now, the major written assignment for Module 2 will come easier.


All in all, I thought the process of writing the methods and the data summary was extremely challenging. It's taught me a lot about how to design an experiment, collect data, analyze that data, and communicate the findings. I have learned a lot this past month and I am hoping to apply these skills during future writing opportunities.


- Chelsea Zhang

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