Literature Review Reflection

Researching a topic for the literature review assignment was rather easy. I must say that I found it easier for me to come up with topic ideas this time around. Initially, I had several ideas for topics running through my head; however, as I focused more on my personal interests and experiences I quickly decided on a topic. A few days after the assignment was handed to me, I was up late completing an assignment for another class when my asthma started to bother me. My asthma symptoms are usually triggered by stress, allergies and extreme temperature conditions. Immediately as I felt my symptoms worsening, I quickly made myself a cup of coffee and took a spray. That is when it hit me. I decided to focus my literature review paper on coffee and its correlation to health. I generally consume coffee when my asthma is exacerbating or need to stay up to complete assignments. It has always helped me to relieve my asthma symptoms; nevertheless, on the other hand it always gave me extreme nervousness after consuming a large cup. My doctor informed that coffee was a natural bronchodilator; however, I was curious to know what other effects it had on my body or general health. This led me to choosing the topic “Habitual Coffee Consumption Correlation to Health” for my literature review paper.

I found researching this topic extremely interesting and easy; moreover, the research results were conflicting, opposing and inconsistent. I found that several different biases existed and that the effects varied in different individuals. This gave me mixed messages on whether coffee was harmful or beneficial to the body. Based on the information that I read in the supporting research papers, it is evident that a lot more research needs to be done to rule out the facts on coffee’s correlation to health.  I chose certain research papers to include in my paper based on different health issues and benefits associated with habitual coffee drinking. I truly didn’t find this assignment as challenging as the others as I found it easier to find a focus after consulting with the professor.

My experiences with my previous papers made me more prepared to tackle and complete this assignment with ease. I focused more on my stance on coffee consumption without including opinions, but rather facts that I gathered from the research papers. This time I didn’t focus too much on what the research papers said; nonetheless, I focused on synthesizing that information to form a stance. My editing process was different from the scientist profile paper assignment because, I was more concerned about making sure that my paper was consistent with facts that correlated with the topic to form my stance. In the scientist profile assignment, I focused more on the facts about the scientist and really didn’t form a stance nor elaborate on my thoughts about her.

I feel as if I was very successful in addressing the assignment prompt because, I had a better understanding on which perspective to write my paper. I feel as if I grew so much from the first assignment up until now. In the beginning, I found the assignment prompts for almost every assignment to be confusing. In the beginning of class, I always pondered on what exactly it meant to write a paper about a topic without summarizing the information that I collected from research and to form a stance without an opinion. Now I’m confident about rewriting my first two papers to align them with the course objectives and their assignment prompts. I learned a lot from my previous papers which made me a better writer this time for my literature review paper. I approached this assignment way differently from my previous papers.  I’m enthusiastic about what my growth will look like in the next writing assignment.

Scientist Profile Reflective Letter

The approach that I initially took when researching my scientist was extremely challenging. This was because, the topics that I was using to assist me in finding my scientist were controversial but settled.This made me feel helpless and my assignment progress stagnant. I also realized that my research methods were not effective. After having a sit down with the professor, I realized that the topics that I was researching were not realistic because they were extremely controversial but settled. At first, I was researching topics such as “Breastfeeding & IQ”,” “Food Additives (e.g. soy) & Breast Cancer”, “Autism and Vaccines” and even “Maternal Mortality”. During the sit-down we discussed my research methods and the professor assisted me in narrowing down some of the topics and showed me how to manipulate the online databases to produce results. My greatest research challenge was that I was simply being too specific and not general enough when researching topics to generate enough search results. For example, I was typing in phrases like “Food Additives & Breast Cancer”  in the PubMed database; hence, this type of search brought me little to no search results. When I researched “Breast Cancer and Diet” and filtered each main topic by“majormesh” for the search, I was able to produce pages of results. My research process was long and stressful! I should have reached out to the professor sooner! Due to my extremely long research process I became delayed in starting my scientist profile.

It was essential that I found a topic that I was interested in, produced a sizable amount of search results for the topic and then pull a scientist’s name from one of the articles. This was important because, I needed to write a scientist profile on a scientist whom I admired their field of study and the things that they themselves were researching on. I wanted to ensure that I wrote a scientist profile that exhibited my interest in the scientist and their studies. I felt as if it would be easy to talk about someone I held interest in rather than someone I settled for. My research tactics consumed so much of my writing time that I didn’t have enough time to conduct an interview on my scientist. The process of working around the interview was extremely difficult. There were questions that I needed to ask my scientist to complete their profile. Since, I was not able to conduct an interview, I was not able to find out things about my scientist and her field of study. I would’ve loved to talk to her and ask her about her huge affinity to her field. My scientist profile lacked rudimentary information about the scientist. In the future, I will ensure that there’s enough time to conduct an interview with my scientist! I truly admired her work and relentlessness in her field.

After completing this assignment, I reflected on my experiences with my Introductory Letter and how it informed me on my approach to this assignment. The Introductory Letter that I completed in the beginning of this course helped me to brainstorm my interests, formulating topics that aided me in finding my scientist for my scientist profile. Both assignments were difficult to start because, it was just as difficult to talk about myself as it was to talk about someone else. This is because, I wasn’t sure from which perspective or stance was best to start both papers. The only differences between the editing process from the Introductory Letter and this assignment is that I found myself continuously proofreading and revising the scientist profile to ensure clarity. The scientist profile was difficult to accomplish at first but, now I feel as if I would’ve had an easier process because of my improved research methods. I feel as if I was somewhat successful in addressing the assignment prompt. Being that I didn’t get to conduct an interview with my scientist, I feel as if I missed quite a few points of the assignment prompt. The scientist profile assignment addressed several course learning outcomes. It mainly addressed the practice of using various library sources or databases, formulating and articulating a stance in my writing and negotiating my writing goals and expectations of the reader or audience. I addressed these course learning outcomes by researching, analyzing and synthesizing the research information that I found, formulating goals to write the information and brainstorming the most effective way to deliver the information! As challenging as I found the scientist profile to be, I would love the opportunity to complete an assignment like this again!

——Lyneisha D Bright