Unlike a few of my classmates – I chose a topic with an overwhelmingly abundance of information. I literally have a sea of journal articles, books, reports, surveys and other helpful material to swim through as I write my final scientific paper. At times it’s both an exciting and tremendous task. I love the nuggets of information I’m learning along the way and the skills I’m acquiring by using APA source citing. I actually think that this project is causing me to desire working in public policy – maybe not as a career but as a volunteer citizen or something. I am first and foremost a Christian and I struggle with the “Separation of Church and State”. I feel that being a Christian isn’t something you can simply turn on or off when required, it’s more like a part of who you are and I don’t know how a person is suppose to separate their self from who they are…well I’m getting somewhat off topic so I’ll end there.
Back to my wonderful experiences with writing my paper…
Prior to taking this course I always felt that I would one day author a scientific paper (and hopefully it would get published) but I never considered the amount of work necessary to write the actual paper. At my job I manage our research projects and work closely with researchers. I noticed that often times the researcher has his/her PhD and their name is listed as the Principle Investigator however, it’s the graduate student that writes or prepares the initial proposal in response to the RFP (Request for Proposal) and it’s usually the same graduate student that writes the abstract which is submitted to journals and/or national conferences. I now know the benefit of having a PhD is simply that you don’t have to do all the legwork when writing a scientific paper! LOL
All-in-all it’s a great experience and hopefully one that is preparing me for my future…
Thanks for reading!
Erika
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