First Foray into Scientific Literature

This assignment, more so than the previous, two required heavily delving into the actual literature surrounding a scientific field. This paper was centered around proper gathering of information, reviewing that information for quality and scientific soundness, and identifying certain trends that are either missing or present. Exhaustive reviews of articles provides more practice both with becoming familiar with the dialogue in a scientific field or community and becoming better at reading sophisticated writing.

I believe I got carried away with the topic as can be seen by my draft, and it was during the peer review sessions that I managed to turn the paper down a notch or two. Initially I had wanted to talk about endoscopic thoracic sympathectomy and how it’s a dangerous surgery that shouldn’t be so easily done because of the potential life altering symptoms. However, I also wanted to talk about the general climate surrounding hyperhidrosis and the lack of research into combination treatments.

Improved Draft

I had forgotten how valuable it was to have other people read your draft and see if they could understand where you’re going from. If you look at a piece of writing from your own point of view, you lose the ability to see the piece holistically. Since my paper was geared towards an audience, it was important that my audience understand the clear goals of my paper and what I wanted out of it. Overall, I ended up having looked through a tremendous amount of research. My rhetorical goals ended up being bogged down by the number of sources I used and seemed to lack my own ideas, which is pretty disappointing considering how important the topic was to me.

Being able to balance your own ideas with all the records and research conducted by other sciences is a balancing act that I’m still learning how to do effectively.