The hardest part of scientific writing for me is being concise

It's crazy to think that we're done with Module 1 of 20.109 already! I definitely learned a lot about DNA damage and experimental techniques, but my main takeaway from the class so far relates to scientific writing. The huge emphasis on being able to clearly communicate your findings to someone else makes sense - if you can't effectively tell others about something cool that you found, then what's the point? The hardest part of the Mod 1 Data Summary for me was keeping my writing concise. I realized that my writing style has a lot of fluff and redundancy, so it was difficult to make each sentence count. I had to repeatedly actively ask myself, "do I really need this sentence here?". If it wasn't meaningful and didn't play an important part in my narrative, then I had to cut it. I normally start the writing process by writing everything relevant I can think of, and then cutting it down. However, here I eventually decided that it would actually be better to start with a skeleton of the key points I wanted to get across and connect them together in a concise way, writing from bottom up instead. I also learned that scientific writing is a lot easier if you focus on your figures first, and then base your narrative on the story you are trying to tell through your data. These are some of the (many) things I learned during Module 1 - hopefully writing the Research Article in Module 2 will start to feel more natural after this!

Here's a (not original) meme I saw somewhere that I thought was funny:


- Pranav Lalgudi

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