Over the span of the course, I believe that I have satisfied the course learning objectives. Namely, I have practiced effective use of the internet to locate the right sources to prove my points, and made sure to incorporate them (with proper citation) in a fluid manner through effective evaluation, quoting, synthesis, and analysis. Furthermore, I successfully navigated the rhetorical situation by delivering the right amount of detail given the constraints of audience level of background and polarity of the topics, altogether forming and articulating coherent stances in my literary works. To ground the reader in the writing, I have included charts, figures, and depictions as a way to multimodally compose my work. During the process of developing the research paper, I have provided numerous constructive criticisms to my groupmates, thus I thoroughly engaged in the collaborative and social aspects of writing. Moreover, I was keen to the varying level of scientific background of other students when crafting my responses on the discussion board. However, I personally don’t feel that I have gained any strategies for reading, drafting, revising, editing, and self-assessment, considering I was already strong in these areas from my research-oriented background. My general perspective on writing and communication has shifted to emphasize and appreciate the art of being sensitive to a reader’s level of interest and attention, which entails a significant portion of writing.

My first work in the course was the technical description. Since this assignment was written at the very beginning of the course, it’s a natural reference for demonstrating my shift in audience sensitivity and tone. In all fairness, the technical description was meant to be a scientific walkthrough of a specialized procedure, which could get complicated in explanation, naturally. However, looking at this assignment retrospectively made me realize that I haven’t fully made the mark for being receptive to a “general lay educated audience” kind of background. For example, my introduction stated the purpose of an ANN in a slightly removed language, suited for people with exposure to the theory of regression in statistics. I should have provided a simple example to demonstrate the use case of an ANN, and although I technically did when I mentioned example applications, those applications typically have their share of unique approaches to the problem, and it’s more high-level. My edits for the final version of the technical description now include a simpler, low-level example to compensate for this inefficiency. Moreover, in the heart of the technical description, I explained the whole process behind how the computations are carried out, and I used figures to bring the descriptions of both the architecture and the loss function involved in learning procedure for training an ANN to life, but it lacked a reason behind the necessary composition of such a thing, making the reader wonder why it has to be so elaborate. I now touch on this point, by stating a mathematical theorem which helps the reader appreciate that such a construct is rigorously backed, wrapping up the description nicely inside the conclusion.

Besides the technical description, and more generally, there were also other times where I feel like I haven’t flattened out some pieces of information to make it appealing to the reader. Another example would be a particular discussion board post where the task was to present a piece of scientific journalism about Covid-19 and explain why I find it interesting and relevant, where I talked about an old Washington Post article which included conceptual simulations on “flattening the curve.” When I addressed the part about the simulations not capturing every bit of reality, that was an outlet for describing the interesting part of the article. However, I didn’t quite hit home regarding the purpose of the simulations and assumed firsthand that the audience was looped in. What I should have done was simply explain that such simulations are simple models for the spreading of disease which track the number of infected persons over time, and thus it describes the stress on the capacity of hospital seats. It is a small change, but I feel it makes a world of a difference in assimilating a reader’s interest.

Over several iterations of writing, and understanding of class expectations, I aimed at maintaining an enticing flow in my work, and the scientific controversy paper is evidence for that improvement. The topic of predictive policing is heavily intertwined with numerous statistical nuances from proper stratification in data collection to the internals of the implementation, making it uneasy to explain in an interesting, lay-educated manner. However, I managed to provide numerous examples which helped shape the reader’s imagination into the right format, and provided clear reasoning behind the analysis in the research paper we needed to include, as well as the need for certain models, such as the Hawkes process. For example, the introduction started by giving other examples of controversial data management practices, which brought the topic into scope, and helped recognize the gravity of predictive policing by framing it part of similar practices, which are ubiquitous in today’s world. When describing the hypothesis testing behind the paper, I translated the results of the statistical texts to plain English, and showed how it fits in the context of the paper, ultimately demonstrating effective source integration and analysis. After that, I naturally transitioned the argument in favor to a discussion on how theories of crime can be properly captured by an example model used in the field, by creating a correspondence between the model’s mechanics. Choosing the right research paper to elaborate on is an example of using the internet effectively to locate appropriate sources: I made sure to include something that I can reasonably explain, which is actually similar to things I encountered in the past during my independent studies. Near the end, when I presented evidence supporting the opposing side, I put the impact of potential racial segregation into perspective, making the issue seem more salient, which exemplifies a proper navigation of the rhetorical situation. With the explanations of for and against predictive policing fresh into mind, the conclusion rounded out the paper by circling back to the original point of contention in the debate, and the reader at this point is able to see the relevance of both stances through my writing.

Altogether, these examples of perfecting my writing to “make it easier for the reader” summarize a paradigm shift in my perspective on writing. Both scientific journalism and research papers have to accommodate to people of varying backgrounds, and this progression emphasizes this. It’s extremely important to be able to connect points across the entire document and maintain a high signal to noise ratio as the reader digests your style of information, and gradually build in sophistication and purpose, rather than starting from a steep hill. Writing is meant to inclusive and self-contained, not exclusive and separate.

Writing is a collaborative sport too! During the process of drafting the research paper on the topic of nuclear energy (not included), I was proactive in making sure that the sources we found would reflect a coherent argument, and even challenged my groupmate’s reasons for including certain sources in a civil fashion. I was willing to admit that perhaps I didn’t quite understand how they could fit in the structure of the research paper we were working on developing, and I was open to new suggestions. This attitude to collaboration created a healthy atmosphere which encouraged diversity in thought. We decided to include a section on how the health risks of nuclear energy are perhaps a bit too over-magnified, and I came up with the idea of drawing on Alpha’s (classmate) experience in the health domain as a nurse and pre-med student. Therefore, we made sure to turn our differences into strengths as well.

Aside from the research paper, when crafting responses to people in posts that involve their background, I don’t think I picked up on any linguistic or stylistic differences in my peer’s posts when they expressed their thoughts, and even though they referenced things that were connected to their field of study, I was still able to connect on the topic due to my previous exchanges, avid interdisciplinary learning, and awareness of news and community developments. For example, during one of the discussion board posts, Alpha created a post where she shared a link to a peer-reviewed article on how to execute safe storage and effective waste disposal of things like PPE and gloves. In response to a commentator for that post and the post in general, I was able to tie in how waste related to COVID-19 is indeed a big problem considered the lack of infrastructure in certain waste disposal departments and how unprecedented production of protective material has been, as well as the technique of hydrogen peroxide vaporization to sterilize materials just from observation of world around me and information from the news. To conclude, it was relatively easy to adapt to each person’s varying backgrounds and style of communicating information.

Lastly, I wish to say that I have not developed any novel strategies with regard to reading, drafting, writing, editing, and self-assessment. This is because I’ve accrued these skills through numerous annotations and inspections of scientific papers and previous scientific writing (such as independent studies and the like). These dimensions in my skills as a writer and researcher aren’t lacking in any shape or form.

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