Dear Anita

Hope your Thanksgiving was great. I am on Thanksgiving break from November 28th-December 1st. I am taking this time to catch up on some assignments. I recently submitted the alternative job-shadowing assignment that my career class professor posted. I have been spending most of my time working on researching ways to improve my scientific writing skills and looking for online articles that provide advice. In addition, I have started a laboratory notebook for Organic Chemistry (I am taking that class in Spring 2020 semester) because I like to get a feel for the guidelines of a lab notebook and lab report writings so that I will feel more prepared when I take the class. The only thing that I cannot do is carry out the experiments because I don’t have the lab tools, but I can read about them and look at other scientists’ data to understand the experiments. Then I gather the knowledge of the other scientists’ data from lab experiments and I use them as sources to write a makeshift lab report. Although it is not quite as good as working on the lab experiments and collecting data myself to write the lab report, I don’t have the lab tools (because I am currently not in the Organic Chemistry class yet and don’t have access to the lab equipment), but I try to build my knowledge of what the experiments might be like by looking at other scientists’ data who have done the experiments before and I use that data as a source to work on lab reports. I hope that building up my knowledge will help me feel more prepared when I actually have to do the labs and write the lab reports with the data I collected when it comes to taking Organic Chemistry in the Spring semester. I am also working on two scientific presentations that are due on December 9th and I have both of them outlined. I just have to work on the grammar for them, and perhaps shorten the points on the PowerPoint slides. For one scientific presentation I am working with four other people in studying treatments for neuroblastoma which is a brain cancer that affects children five years or younger. I feel that some of the slides’ points are a bit lengthy and am working on shortening the details, but making sure that the information still makes sense and flows. For the other scientific presentation, I am describing how genetic research will help society, and also help me understand myself as a person and I find this assignment a bit easier, but it also takes time to contemplate about my inner self and what genetics research has to contribute to help improve society.

Hope you are well and blessings to you in your life’s path!

• This reply was modified 5 years ago by Janus.