Scavenging for Words to Communicate My Thoughts - Where are they to be found?

     Scientific writing for me is a whirlwind. To transition from a largely superfluous, colorful, and quite honestly indirect to a clear, concise, and simple writing style is a more difficult task than it seems. Quite often I find myself scrounging for the right word to explain my thoughts, while it sits serenely at the tip of my tongue with none of the urgency I feel exuding from my pores. It's quite difficult for scientific writing to be a favorite when my mind is utterly exhausted, constantly chasing precise words to no avail, while I crumble under the weight of all of the letters I have strewn together in hopes of even glancing at the idea I was attempting to express. 

    The homework for this module truly brought into perspective the extent of my longstanding troubles with "getting to the point." At first, I didn't realize the extra time it took for each homework assignment to reread and edit my work to craft a true scientific response, but now I am much more aware of the extra work it takes for me to produce high quality writing in this field. 

    The data summary was difficult to write, but in style, not content. I think the homework assignments did help and reduce some of the burden, but in the same vein added burden in the middle of the week when I had to allocate time to the work for my other 5 classes. I also think the homework assignments were harder/took a lot more time without the context of the data summary to help, but all in all I learned a lot in the process of this assignment and throughout the module, though my most impactful lessons may have come from the Communications Lab workshops. 

~Gabi N.

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