Some Mod1 thoughts

Sometimes, I’ll start reading a paper, think it’s really interesting, and just dive into the rabbit hole of looking through the references, and then through the references of the references, and then the references of the references of the references and you get the idea. I’ll admit it, I just really enjoy reading papers. Or so I thought.

I didn’t realize until we started making figures and writing figure captions for the Mod1 assignments that writing any sort of concise, yet thorough scientific report is really such a struggle. First, I would always spend way too much time painstakingly editing the figures in Google Slides because I have absolutely zero Photoshop skills, then when it came to the caption, I always started incorrectly by interpreting the data, and above all, I was constantly trying to find the balance between spoon-feeding every detail and outlining just the big picture. Basically, no matter how hard I tried, my figures were never even close to the quality of real figures in real papers! At some point during Mod1, I think I even began to resent all of the papers I was reading they made my scientific writing skills seem so inadequate.

But, as time went on, I started getting really specific and helpful feedback from Leslie on my assignments and after getting suggestions from my Comm Lab appointment, I felt increasingly more adequate (shout out to Tyler for going light on the criticism part of constructive criticism!). Overall, it was very nice to be able to do small scientific writing assignments because I got feedback with every assignment and was able to slowly improve for the next one. And, even though I barely survived data summary, looking back at it, I’m thankful for the practice. Because of Mod1, I now appreciate good scientific writing infinitely more.

My scientific writing skills on the other hand are definitely a work in progress, but on the bright side, I guess at least I like reading papers again.