A Week of Procrastination

Well, this week, we didn't have any Writing 39C classes. Dr. Haas assigned us with work that we would have done in class and assignments to help us write the first draft of the Historical Conversation Project (HCP). Of course, being the good student I am (sarcasm), I decided to wait until the weekend the project is due to start writing the paper. Despite the large text that says, "Don't procrastinate" on front page of the class website, I decided to wait until late at Saturday night to look for and annotate my sources and until Sunday night to begin writing. Now, writing this blog post at 4:30 am, after submitting the assignment late, and later this blog, I can tell you that procrastinating was definitely worth it (sarcasm again).

Anyways, about my draft, I think one of the strengths of my draft is how I simplified the language used in all my sources so that my paper is understandable by people without strong background in biology. To me, understanding more than half of what the researchers were saying was perhaps the most challenging thing to overcome when writing this draft. After spending what felt like hours Googling the innumerable amounts of scientific terms and jargons used in every sentence, I was finally able to understand the and rewrite the main points of the researchers. Although I attempted to simplify most of the science in my paper, there are still scientific terms that I chose to leave in my essay. I felt like it was the best to avoid oversimplfying the term in order to accurately reflect the researchers' main points. I think the main weakness of my draft is that I didn't write the paper enough as a historical conversation. The whole point of the paper is to write about what people are researching about in the chosen topic. However, I felt like the majority of my paper is more about research that explain the olfactory receptor neurons of lobsters and their structures, rather than about actual research on the neural regeneration of lobsters. I felt like such in depth explanation was needed in order make the paper understandable for all readers.

For the next round of revisions, I definitely feel like I need to improve upon the introduction and conclusions of my essay. Because I was unsure how I should introduce my topic and the researches I am referencing to, I imitated the writing style of a scientific paper we had to read for class. Although I personally felt that the introduction was easy to follow, I don't think it is at the proficiency level required of this class. I also need to improve the conclusion of my essay. I had trouble finding a way to end my essay by connecting my topic to the advocacy project I will do later in the quarter. I feel like I can definitely improve both my introduction and conclusion if I spend enough time on it, instead of feeling rushed like I did today.