Writing Woes

Last semester I had two unique writing experiences that shook the foundations of what I thought I knew.  This challenge ironically came in Introductory Biology Lab.  Although the majority of the class was spent in lab, a large portion of the grade was based on two papers on topics relevant to the experiments performed.  I had previously been successful in writing assignments in college and was confident in my ability to write well.  The assignment called for summarizing and analyzing a scientific journal article on plasmid cloning.  Although I was not familiar with the topic, I worked through the article until I understood the methods and concepts.  I then tried to simplify what I found and satisfy the additional criteria in the prompt using a writing style I was comfortable with.  I was pleased and confident with my final product, especially after receiving good feedback from the GSI on my draft and doing the minor revisions she had suggested.  However, when the papers came back I was appalled at the grade I received.  The GSI had ripped it to shreds and shot down every defense I tried to make.  I was marked down the most on writing that wasn't concise and the sentence structures that were not clear.

 The next paper was a report on an experiment regarding plant competition we had done in lab. It involved interpreting a large amount of messy data and drawing conclusions from it. Since my confidence in my writing was demolished after the first paper, I struggled to even get a draft of the second assignment.  I felt overwhelmed by the vast amount of information to analyze and the level of perfection that the writing was going to be held to.  Once I finally worked through a first draft, I struggled with the strict page limit we were held to.  However, this required me to address my issue of conciseness when spending an immense amount of time revising.  I finally eliminated any nonessential wording even though it violated my perception of good writing.  I ended up receiving a much higher score although not a score reflective of the time I spent mulling over the assignment.

I believe these writing assignments definitely tarred my impression of the class.  I thought the assignments were too vague and then graded to a ridiculous level of perfection for an introductory biology course.  I learned about writing in the specific style that was expected in the class and improved my ability to write concisely.  However, I have never struggled so much on a writing assignment as I did with the second paper.  Although I spent a great deal of time on it, I don't feel like my writing improved much as a result.  I became extremely familiar with the specific experiment and article we analyzed, but I didn't feel like this reflected learning.  I think the reason that I felt that I didn't learn a lot from this writing experience was the lack of constructive feedback.  The first feedback on my draft was positive but then the final was extremely negative.  I felt that this was not conducive to learning or fair.  The second paper I received vague feedback in office hours that did not translate to what I needed to improve my writing.

Although I have been arguing that my learning was compromised by lack of sufficient feedback from the instructor, another theory of learning states self-provided feedback in writing as a characteristic of learning.  Writing does allow the writer a unique chance at self-feedback through reading and revising their work.  However, writers are plagued with a selective blindness when reading their own writing.  Awkward phrases, bad sentence structure, and flaws of many types are glossed over because the writer knows what he is trying to communicate.  This blindness is the danger of self-feedback and reflects the benefit of constructive feedback from instructors and peers.  

This is my Bio 173 rant.  I hope to learn from it what I can but not dwell on what is done.

Kaitlyn