Welcome to my digital portfolio! My name is Jessica Umanzor and within this site, you will be able to see what I have written throughout my English 201003 class, Writing for the Sciences. I have wished to be able to improve my grammar and my ability to formulate an essay structure that is clear and concise with smooth transitions. I assume this to be my greatest weakness in my writing proficiency as well. Being that it was not my first language, I know that these have always been my major weaknesses when it comes to forming essays and research papers. In my future career as a writer, I hope to be a better researcher and grow as someone who is able to show how my research is able to support my thesis. To be able to show that the methodology in research is not the only thing that is needed for a good paper, you need to be able to make a clear point with reliable resources to back it up.

 

Response – RadioLab: Infective Heredity

This was definitely one of my favorite papers to write as it involved listing to a podcast in which I was able to learn about how evolution is completely different from what is generally taught. It also was one of the easier papers I had to write in this class, as it was new and interesting. The podcast taught me something new and I was able to focus more and be interested in responding to information that is not generally talked about in a classroom setting. It would have been more difficult to write had it not maintained my interest.

Infective heredity is a form of non-mendelian heredity which involves being able to share DNA and other forms of bacteria with other cells eventually developing a form of heredity that is shared within the culture. This was something I had no idea about, it then spoke about the white speckled moths in New England during industrialization that reminded me of one of the examples I had learned in high school. As the speckled moths were used to show Darwinian evolution, it turns out that that was not the case and the reason why the moths did not gradually turned black it happened spontaneously because of infective heredity.

 

Informative – The Use of Embryonic Stem Cell Research

This paper was definitely one of the more difficult ones I had to write simply because we hadn’t had any real direction on what was wanted in class. So the thesis, I know that my thesis was definitely weak and needed a lot of work but I wasn’t sure how to improve on it because even with guidelines I felt like I needed more examples of a good thesis in order to model mine after. I picked a topic that I knew would be controversial but also was one that I knew a lot about, simply to feel more comfortable writing.

Embryonic stem cell research deals with using pluripotent cells to then developing in other healthy body tissue for people with various diseases or infections. This is a revolutionary form of science and it’s getting more funding and as a result, we are able to research it further. I feel like it was because of this paper I was able to see my true weaknesses in writing that affect the rest of my paper. Without a strong thesis that is concise and without any bias I’m not able to form a paper in which I can clearly explain what I want.

Position Paper – The Use of Embryonic Stem Cell Research

In the position, the paper was difficult in that I had to use the same topic that I had for my last paper but change it in order to have a particular stance. So the formatting changed and at first, I assumed I would just have to change a few things from my previous paper, but I ended up changing the whole paper. Despite me not expecting to do that I felt as if I had improved in comparison to my original draft in the informative paper. It also had more inofmration on stem cell research to focus my paper around it.

The same topic was used in the last paper, both relating to research with embryonic stem cells and the way religion has affected the way society has detained advancements. I was able to have more os an opinion on this paper and take a personal stance in what I wanted to say on the subject. This made me more comfortable as I felt as it just informing people of the situation without giving an opinion is more difficult than taking a perosonal stance. Nonetheless, what I really had to focus on was being able to formulate a good thesis to help my stance. Being weak in wrting a thesis didn’t helo my counterargument, so thats what I had to focus more on.

Proposal – Genetic Engineering: The Hazards of Germline Editing

The proposal was something that really had my interest in that it referenced germline editing which I had known about but never really researched it as much I had to for this paper. It wasn’t until I had heard the term designer baby was I understand what the topic was based on. It was one of the easier ones in that I had more people helping in understand it, and I had my genetics covering the topic so I was able to use my knowledge from that class to bring into my writing. It was difficult by it being a new branch of science so it was hard to find any cases of what would happen if CRISPR was used on humans.

CRISPR engineering deals with editing the genome of the embryo, this was being done for the removal of genetic diseases but as a result, this would also be done for the removal of undesired physical characteristics. I was able to learn a lot about a new topic as was able to really strengthen my ability to write a proper thesis. For the overall structure of the report, I was familiar with as I had written papers in that type of format before as well.

Research Paper – A Future In CRISPR

My final research paper was something I took a lot of interst in as it allowed to take the topic that I had with my group and give it my own opinion of the topic. I felt as if I had more crontrol on the organization for the structure of my paper. Also by this time I had already learned how to stregthern most of my weaknesses as a writer. This made it easier for me to research the topic and strengthen it to maintain better direction.

This paper focuses more on the science behind CRISPR-Cas9 and the reference of the only known case of a successful human CRISPR full-term pregnancy in China. I was able to learn alot about how new this branch of science was and how it was able to change the ways in which we are thinking about progressing in genetic engineering. I was able to really work on my grammar and my transitioning sentences within my body paragraphs.