4/25/2021

Hello everyone! I finished my first draft for the lab report and I’m very happy with how it turned out. After receiving my grades and feedback for the technical description and memo projects, I realized that I really need to work on my citations, especially the in text ones. In the technical description and memo assignments, I didn’t include any in text citations at all which is a problem because that is technically plagiarism. I’m using an idea that isn’t my own and not citing the proper source. Although I did include the source in the references page for both assignments, it’s still not enough because I need to cite the specific ideas that I got from each source. This is something I aimed to improve upon in my lab report which I did. I managed to cite all my sources and ideas, both in text and in the references section. It also helped me realize the importance of the in text citations because now my audience can differentiate between my ideas and the ideas of others. Granted, this assignment mainly focused on the ideas and research done by others simply because I didn’t conduct any labs or experiments on my own, but I still did include some of my own ideas which I obviously didn’t cite. I have to begin revising my first draft now and based on the feedback from my peers, there isn’t really much I need to change. The one major issue is that it’s too long and so I need to condense the information a little more which shouldn’t be too much of a problem. I’m eager to start working on the engineering proposal, since it’s the biggest assignment of the semester, and will require me to put together all the skills I’ve learned so far. But that’s it for now, I’ll be back next week!

4/15/2021

Hello Everyone! I realize that I’ve been slacking recently with the journals so I’m gonna try to keep it every Thursday so I have a consistent weekly journal. More importantly, however, today I started my lab report assignment. I’m really excited to start drafting and working on it because I’m actually very interested in this topic. The two previous assignments I’ve done haven’t been about topics that I’m all that interested in so they did really feel like assignments for an English class but this doesn’t. This is something I want to explore and learn about. I chose to study vaccines that are delivered through inhalation, which are really interesting. They have so many implications and are so important, especially with the global pandemic we’re living in today. I realize that this assignment is a very different lab report than any other lab report I’ve done for a science class. My science classes focus more on the data and experiment, while this assignment focuses more on the actual lab report which is an interesting difference. It means I have to take a different approach to this lab report, and focus more on how I’m portraying my information, data, and ideas. It’s also going to need a lot of research since I’m not actually doing any experiments myself, just citing the works of others. Regardless, it’s an assignment I’m excited to tackle. I have already outlines it and created a title and abstract. However I will be changing the abstract because it feels more like an introduction. I’m a little confused between the two, so I will have to do some research to find the distinction or go back to the textbook. But that’s it for today’s journal, I’ll be back next week!

4/5/2021

Wow it’s been a while since I had a journal entry! I just got off spring break and I told myself that I really needed this break so I won’t be doing any work, but I have a lot of catching up to do now. We submitted our memos which I’m very happy with how it turned out. My team and I all worked together to produce the best final product possible and it turned out great! Working as a team was a really good experience, although I would rather it have been in person instead of online. Working together remotely is just difficult, awkward, and inefficient but certainly doable. Looking forward, I’m excited to start the third assignment, which is the lab report. I’m comfortable enough with the layout of this class to start working on more difficult and involved assignments, and focus on topics that are more geared towards my interests and my major, which is biomedical engineering. Over the next few days, I will start thinking about a topic to use for this lab report, something that really interests me so that the assignment won’t even feel like an assignment. However, I don’t know how this lab report will be formatted considering there isn’t an actual lab or data collection associated with the report. All lab reports I’ve done previously had data associated with them so I knew what to include and how to draw conclusions and make connections. I’m sure this will be cleared up in class, but I just like to think ahead. That’s it for today’s journal, and I’ll try to be more consistent with them now considering that spring break is over.