1.
The portfolio I will be viewing is written by Campbell Drohan.
2.
Based on Campbell’s BIOL 463 portfolio, I would say that her biggest strengths are reflectiveness and critical thinking. Campbell was very reflective of her learning, which is particularly evident in her learning journal #1, techniques café reflection, and final project reflection. In these posts, she connected new knowledge with what she already knew and was cognizant of the learning objectives that she met through each assignment. In addition to being reflective, Campbell demonstrated great critical thinking in her post titled, “Appreciating the negative in scientific research,” in which she provided a thoughtful argument of how publishing negative results in scientific papers can prevent other researchers from pursuing projects that have already been done.
3.
I believe that one thing Campbell learned, that I did not, from the final project is a method to assess tumourigenicity using xenografts. One thing that I learned, that I think Campbell did not learn, from the final project is a method to extract alveolar macrophages through bronchoalveolar lavage.
As mentioned in my previously posted reflection to my final project, the most valuable lesson I learned from doing my final project is to be persistent when facing a challenge. There were often times when I had difficulty expressing my ideas in writing and it felt frustrating to be at a standstill when I wanted to move forward with my project. For example, the background section of my project was challenging for me to write because I had consulted many previous studies that served as the inspirations my research question, but it was difficult for me to figure out how to integrate these previous studies in my background section in order to set the stage for my project. Despite the difficulty I experienced, I kept working at it and I was eventually happy with what I wrote. Though the challenges of the final project for BIOL 463 are over, there will still be plenty of challenges to face as I move forward, and I believe that persistence will help me overcome them.