Welcome!
“English 21003: Writing for the Sciences” course with Professor Lisa Diomande is one of the best part of my learning experience during my freshman year at the City College of New York. Being an immigrant who came to United States 4 years ago without any prior knowledge of English, writing class have always been intimidating to me. Even one of the strong reason I decided to pursue Bachelor of Sciences was to avoid English literature and also the intensity of writing and reading. After taking this course, my whole idea about majoring in science changed. I figured out that studying science also demands a lot of writing. I was successful while slaking in high school without really learning how to write effectively. For this class, I had to focus on learning how to write papers as I realized that I will definitely need writing skills to survive in college. It was very overwhelming experince for me. Surprisingly, the second fact I discovered about myself throughout this course is that writing also has some special tools and techniques to follow. It is possible to overcome the fear of writing scientific papers. Throughout this course I overcame my fear. Now, I actually like to write and feel confident of expressing my thoughts and discoveries.
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| Manipulating Perception |
I think I grew and improved as a student throughout this course. I had to face a lot of challenges, but I also gained confidence when I overcame the challenges. One of the very first challenge I had to tackle in this class was typing effectively and fast. We had many assignments for this course including classwork submissions, weekly discussion forums on Blackboard, four major projects like Memorandum, Profile essay, Argumentative essay, final Research essay with several drafts for each individual project. We also had to make outlines and concept maps for them. In addition, we had to submit peer reviews and write reflections for all the projects. In brief, I had to type a lot for this class. As I did not know how to type fast effectively, I had to contribute a lot of my time outside of the classroom for each assignment. I had to read a lot too. We had to read an assigned chapter every week from the book “Sister Citizen: “Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America” by Melissa V. Harris-Perry. It was an interesting political book, but it was pretty intense. The language used in the book was not easy. Moreover, we had to participate on discussion board on CUNY Blackboard website. Also, I had to learn how use Blackboard effectively. In the beginning, I had to struggle a lot with the website regarding posting on discussion forums and submitting the assignments. I had to spend extra time regarding it. Thanks to my classmates and Professor Diomande that they helped me understand operating the website and utilizing other resources.
Throughout this course, I realized that writing a paper is not just throwing some paragraphs on the paper with an introduction and conclusion. It is a process. It includes selecting a topic, formulating a thesis, considering a stance, creating outlines, writing some drafts and many more. Especially, writing scientific papers, what we are doing in this class, requires a lot of research behind it. I feel it is very similar to working at a laboratory. Some steps should be followed which will lead towards success. But this demands a lot of time. Professor Diomande guided me on time management as it had become a very serious issue on the way of my success in this course. She gave me few extensions and shared various experiences and advices that I could relate with. She often stayed over time after the class to help me clarifying my ideas and answering my questions regarding the assignments.
Writing the memorandum and profile essay was a valuable experience for me, because I did not hear of memorandum and profile essay before I took this course. The format of these writings were pretty different. I enjoyed writing these. While writing argumentative essay and research paper, I was consuming a lot of my time on writing as I needed time to organize my thoughts. Often, I had my ideas on my head, but I could not express the deeper meaning on what I wanted to convey. Outlining and multiple drafting helped me a lot on that case. For me, research paper was the most challenging paper of all. In the research paper I used all the skill I learnt from writing the previous essays to write an effective research paper. The first step was to come up with the topic to do my research on. The topic I came up was too general or broad. I was asked to be more specific about it. I took some time to make my topic specific and precise. After the finding the topic to be work on, researching on it to find relevant information for my paper became an important task. I had to go through a lot of scholarly articles and news to figure out whether the information is significant to my paper or not. The fun part was that I got to learn some interesting facts and discoveries about my topic which I did not know before. Besides, we had to go through peer review for all the papers. I found it most useful tactic and activity on this course. While peer reviewing, I not only got a review from my fellow classmates, but also got to learn about their technique and process of writing.
Overall, I would say that my writing skills improved and gained confidence of writing scientific papers. I feel like I mastered some valuable skills that are helpful to write a better paper at certain ways, like having a strong connection to the texts, being careful about the tone and providing supporting explanation with examples. I still need to work on my grammar, thesis statement, structure and organization throughout my college life. But to me as a student, I found myself one step closer to reach the goal as being able to express my voice clearly through my own writing after taking this course.
Thank You Letter
Dear Prof. Diomande,
I am writing to thank you for your excellent course "Writing for Sciences". I admit that I first took the class to fulfill a science requirement but within the first couple weeks I considered it one of my favorite courses of my freshman year at CCNY. Your extensive knowledge, enthusiasm and organization made the class a pleasure to attend and study for.
Your class was exactly the college course that I will miss. It was a subject matter I knew little about and even feared. After learning how to write scientific papers however, it has honestly given me a new understanding of college life. Every lecture surprised me!
I'll have you know that as it is last writing class for my major, I learnt a lot from that will help me prepare for future classes. I have become a big fan of your generosity and kindness. Before your class I would cringed in fear and disgust, but after knowing more about their writing and reading, I stared to enjoy it with sheer fascination. Thank you for completing my first year experience at CCNY, I really appreciate it. Good luck next semester.
Thankfully,
Sujoy Bhowmik
I am writing to thank you for your excellent course "Writing for Sciences". I admit that I first took the class to fulfill a science requirement but within the first couple weeks I considered it one of my favorite courses of my freshman year at CCNY. Your extensive knowledge, enthusiasm and organization made the class a pleasure to attend and study for.
Your class was exactly the college course that I will miss. It was a subject matter I knew little about and even feared. After learning how to write scientific papers however, it has honestly given me a new understanding of college life. Every lecture surprised me!
I'll have you know that as it is last writing class for my major, I learnt a lot from that will help me prepare for future classes. I have become a big fan of your generosity and kindness. Before your class I would cringed in fear and disgust, but after knowing more about their writing and reading, I stared to enjoy it with sheer fascination. Thank you for completing my first year experience at CCNY, I really appreciate it. Good luck next semester.
Thankfully,
Sujoy Bhowmik
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