WRIT1000 Assessment Four: Self Reflection Exemplar How did I select my field and topic of interest Does this align with who I hope to become in the future I have found Neuroscience to be an incredibly diverse and wide-reaching area of research, with the complex and mysterious nature of this field continuing to excite me on a daily basis. Throughout my university studies, I have found neurological diseases to be of particular interest to me, especially considering that most prominent neurological disorders have no cure and very limited treatment. As I am currently planning to undertake an Honours in Neuroscience, this course has been instrumental in fostering my academic writing skills that I will continue to employ next year when I begin my thesis. What elements of my proposal have I maintained What have I changed over the course of semester Why As pointed out by my tutor, I realised that my proposal was quite ambitious in terms of the depth of research I wanted to cover. This made me re-evaluate what was most relevant to my argument, as well as what areas I was most interested in exploring considering the complexity of the field. I decided to channel my focus onto the most up-to- date therapeutic research currently out there and leave out some of the more well-covered areas. I think the positive feedback I received on the general scope of my project gave me the confidence to select the sources that I felt were most relevant to my argument. What has been the most interesting discovery I have made while preparing my final task Why The most surprising discovery I made about this field was the sheer amount of research available on Motor Neuron Disease (MND). This posed a significant challenge for me as it required me to do a lot of background reading to find the most relevant sources for inclusion. As it is such a well-stu
died and highly discussed area of research, it was even more surprising to realise how little effective treatments are available for MND. This increased the challenge of narrowing down my argument, and really pushed me to focus on specific areas that I thought were most relevant What aspects of my proposal and draft would I like to improve Through participating in the weekly discussion boards, it was brought to my attention that my writing was riddled with “hedges”, especially words such as “might”, “perhaps” and “many”. This was creating uncertainty in my writing style and greatly hindered me from making a compelling and direct argument. Luckily this was brought to my attention after my draft submission, so I was able to go back through my work and delete these words, adding a greater level of sophistication to my final paper. Additionally, as I implemented a scientific style of writing I found that I would often sacrifice clarity to sound more sophisticated. This is still something that I need to work on but as I am becoming more actively aware of this fault, I feel that my writing is beginning to have a greater level of direction and clarity. What have I learned in WRIT1000 that has shaped my own writing One of my favourite lessons that has stuck with me over this course is the importance of keeping the reader in mind when we write. Essentially, if we do not know the purpose and reason behind our writing, then what is the point of writing Through becoming more conscious of the fact that my work had a purpose and was going to be read by an active reader I found that cohesion and clarity more easily followed. Overall, I think the most important lesson I have learnt is that my writing style is continuously evolving, and I should learn to embrace this whole heartedly rather than being disheartened by criticism.