As this unit comes to an end, I thought that working on emails, memos, and application letters were a great introduction to this course, as it drew parallels between applying for a job and forming groups to work with for this course. Specifically, this exercise provided an opportunity to write to those outside of our own field of study. After graduation, I can imagine many times in our career where we will have to write to and learn from people across many backgrounds. By having an opportunity to practice we write to our peers here where they can help us improve, I think will be extremely valuable in the future.
With my background in Biology and interest in infection and diseases, I chose a word that was common to that field, had a lot of scientific depth but could be explained to any audience. The word “inflammation” carries a lot of weight in that there are many interactions between proteins, cells, activating each other when that immune response is triggered. It was a challenge to simplify these interactions and physiological effects while keeping my expanded definition concise but detailed enough to not lose my audience. While writing this assignment, I realized the importance of visualizing the audience that these definitions are to be addressed to, allowing me to focus my writing and maintain consistency throughout.
As I wrote my first peer review, I thought that it would be very beneficial because certain things can go unnoticed even during proofreading and having an outside perspective of what works well and what things can be improved instills a sense of encouragement and motivation to refine our work. Reviewing Carmen’s definition of a “Prisoner’s Dilemma”, it was a term I’ve heard of but couldn’t explain clearly. Overall, I felt her definition was well written as it was clear, concise, and logical and she accompanied her definition with a visual that was easy to understand and complimented her work beautifully. The textbook was important for me writing this review as it gave me structure to make my peer review effective and helpful while maintaining a friendly, and encouraging tone. During this peer review, I feel like I gained more insight in how I should be approaching my own work when writing and proofreading.
Regarding the editing process, Yuta was very clear with his suggestions in his peer reviews, pointing out areas that I could improve on. His overall tone was positive and encouraging throughout his peer review, which gives me confidence to continue doing the things I did well and receive his feedback positively. He pointed out that I should include adding detail to some areas of my work to help make things more clear, such as explaining how chemical irritants are neutralized and specifying on how much time inflammation takes to clear up.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the unit so far. I feel that I’ve learned a lot about writing emails and writing for a specific audience and can transition that to the work we’ll do in this course. I’m excited to work with my team as we learn new techniques and put those techniques into practice.
Attached:
Inflammation – Peer Review
Revised Definition of “Inflammation”