Final Blog: Transformative Learning

How has my writing improved?

At the end of this class, I have found that my writing has really been transformed. The extensive research that I have done has allowed me to better understand how to take scientific research and make it into an engaging article. Specifically in my Scicomm article, I saw how much my writing developed as I realized that it is so crucial to keep the reader engaged throughout the entire piece. Additionally, this assignment helped me make my writing more clear and concise.

Furthermore, I have found that I am now a faster writer because I understand how to plan efficiently for my writing. Creating extensive outlines that include specific evidence and images really helps me plan well.

What have I learned?

This class gave me the opportunity to deep dive into animal, specifically crow, research. As a result, I have gotten a greater appreciation of all animals as I have learned more and more about how incredible, intelligent, and unique they are.

I know now that all animals deserve our upmost respect because they are all so extremely smart and hold their own social and cultural lives that we could never comprehend. If you look deeply into any creature, you will find that they are fascinating and have many amazing habits that we do not have.

I have learned so much from all my research on crows, but the fact that stuck with me the most is that crows are as intelligent as a seven year old!! Also, check out this picture of a cute crow that I captured outside my window, pictured to the right!

Two problems I faced in this class

Although fun, this class was difficult and really need lots of attention and time. Consequently, sometimes I found that I did not manage my time well for this class and ended up doing some assignments late at night right before they were due.

To solve this issue in the future, I should set specific times during the week to work on my assignments. This planning will make me not procrastinate and be super efficient during those "work times" in order to get my assignments done without wasting any time.

Throughout the class, I also found that I still have some minor grammar issues when writing, specifically when citing a source or citing a quote.

To become better at these grammar issues, it would be important for me to reach out to

my teachers in the future and ask them any questions about formatting these things. I was shy at doing that in this class, which ended up causing some uncertainty from me when citing sources and quotes.

Takeaways

Overall, this class was not only so much fun to research on crows, but it made me into a stronger and more confident writer!!