Showing posts with label school papers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label school papers. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
First Semester Finished!
Woo-hoo! Party time at the Farthest North Frat House! "I Tappa Kegga" rulez! All finished with my first semester of grad school. 6 credits earned, 30 more to go. 4.0 average so far! I am seriously considering changing my specialty from Biotech Regulations to Bioinformatics as I really enjoyed learning about bioinformatics and all of the tools used in biotechnology. I hear that next semester will include more on-line panty raids and even an e-goat in the dean's office. Can't wait!
Friday, November 7, 2014
Off-Label Drug Use
Here's the third paper I turned in this semester. 100/100 points! Again, for BIOT640, Ethical Considerations in Biotechnology. 5000-6000 words on an assigned topic. My topic was "Off-Label Drug Use" which is fitting because I did seem to turn potato starch into the #1 abused drug in the blogosphere...
This is an interesting topic, I had no idea this sort of stuff goes on and it makes me shake my head at our system of government regulation trying to keep a handle on Big-Pharma while the patient suffers.
Read only if you are very bored, or need something to put you to sleep. Don't say I didn't warn you!
This is an interesting topic, I had no idea this sort of stuff goes on and it makes me shake my head at our system of government regulation trying to keep a handle on Big-Pharma while the patient suffers.
Read only if you are very bored, or need something to put you to sleep. Don't say I didn't warn you!
Thursday, November 6, 2014
Bees, Butterflies, Biotech, and Barack
Here's the second paper I did this semester. It was for BIOT640, Ethical Considerations in Biotechnology...1000 words in APA format on recent legislation that will effect the field of biotechnology. I received a 95/100 points with the comment that it should have had a bit more discussion on how the field of biotechnology will be effected by this memorandum.
It's kind of crazy writing college papers. Back when I got my Bachelor's, the internet was still young and was basically worthless for researching. I remember spending many days at the library checking out books, scribbling notes out of encyclopedias, and photocopying magazine articles and scratching notes for references on the back. I hate to think about how many acts of blatant plagiarism I committed just because there was really no way to get caught...my computer was great for word processing, but not much more.
Now we have the world's biggest library in our house and on our phone. Once you learn how to navigate it, it's an amazing place! No Dewey Decimal System to bother with and no pesky librarians 'shusshing' you. You'd think plagiarism would be rampant now, but the universities have gotten smart! Before turning in any paper, you must first submit it to Turn It In .com. This is a student's worst nightmare! An automated "originality" checker. Once submitted, your paper is matched against the entire internet to look for strings of words that match strings of other people's words...and given an originality score. All of my papers so far have received a "zero" which means completely original. The school policy is that no paper may have a TurnItIn score higher than 10%. Properly cited quotes do not count against the originality score. One student lamented in an online discussion that her paper had received a "60%" meaning it was only 40% original.
Had I written this blog prior to turning this paper in to TurnItIn, it supposedly would have gotten a "100% plagiarized" score.
It's kind of crazy writing college papers. Back when I got my Bachelor's, the internet was still young and was basically worthless for researching. I remember spending many days at the library checking out books, scribbling notes out of encyclopedias, and photocopying magazine articles and scratching notes for references on the back. I hate to think about how many acts of blatant plagiarism I committed just because there was really no way to get caught...my computer was great for word processing, but not much more.
Now we have the world's biggest library in our house and on our phone. Once you learn how to navigate it, it's an amazing place! No Dewey Decimal System to bother with and no pesky librarians 'shusshing' you. You'd think plagiarism would be rampant now, but the universities have gotten smart! Before turning in any paper, you must first submit it to Turn It In .com. This is a student's worst nightmare! An automated "originality" checker. Once submitted, your paper is matched against the entire internet to look for strings of words that match strings of other people's words...and given an originality score. All of my papers so far have received a "zero" which means completely original. The school policy is that no paper may have a TurnItIn score higher than 10%. Properly cited quotes do not count against the originality score. One student lamented in an online discussion that her paper had received a "60%" meaning it was only 40% original.
Had I written this blog prior to turning this paper in to TurnItIn, it supposedly would have gotten a "100% plagiarized" score.
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
This I Believe Essay
As many of you know, at age 49 I decided to go back to college and get a Master's in Biotechnology. In the first semester, every student is required to take a class called "Intro to Graduate Studies." The class itself is worth zero credits towards graduating, and covers things like using the school library, plagiarism, writing in APA style, and research skills. I learned a few things, I guess. One of the assignments was to write a short, 500 word, essay based on Edward R. Murrows "This I Believe" radio show of the 1950's. This I Believe still exists on line and in pod casts. Check it out, kinda cool for short inspirational kind of stories.
This I Believe is based on a 1950s radio program of the same name, hosted by acclaimed journalist Edward R. Murrow. Each day, Americans gathered by their radios to hear compelling essays from the likes of Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Robinson, Helen Keller, and Harry Truman as well as corporate leaders, cab drivers, scientists, and secretaries—anyone able to distill into a few minutes the guiding principles by which they lived. These essayists’ words brought comfort and inspiration to a country worried about the Cold War, McCarthyism, and racial division.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)