Reflections on my first course

My first course is completed and I learned quite a bit, both in content and about myself.  The course is designed to enhance one's skills in writing research reports for publication in scientific journals.  While I have been an avid reader of various journals, I was not aware or attentive to several nuances in the writing of such articles.  I feel much more confident in my ability to adhere to common practices for such writing, but I am still a work in progress.  

Some basic tips I've found useful for editing and revising my own work:

    1) Reading my work aloud to myself allows me to catch grammatical errors and things that just sound off - like verb or tense disagreements.

    2) Outlining is key to structuring thoughts, but it can take on various forms.  I like to just list items line by line under headings and subheadings and then I can drag and drop to move the order around as needed.  It's always helpful to include the reference in each bullet point, too.

Sometimes life will life you.  At the midway point of the course I had a week of various family items arise on top of some pre-planned commitments (track meets, daughter's soccer games, etc.).  I was up against an early deadline and did not submit my greatest work.  I also didn't take time to fully process the learning prior to submitting the work, as I just didn't have time.  I read the instructor's feedback, which was helpful to make some specific adjustments in my work moving forward, but I also took time to reflect upon and process the learning when I had time later in the week.  Life is life, and we cannot control all things.  This will occur again, I'm sure.  The best thing I can try to do moving forward is anticipate already busy weeks and work ahead as much as possible.  

I stumbled across this reference tool for organizing articles, highlighting and note-taking, and exporting citations.  So far the free version has worked out great: https://sciwheel.com/

Course 2 is underway: Research Design.  I am looking forward to learning the why and how behind setting up proper research experiments.  

I am re-invigorated by the peer interactions, even though they are virtual.  I love academia and all of the individuals who are committed to advancing human knowledge in various fields are inspiring.