Ryan Swenson

“Summary Reflection”

          We wrote a summary the past few weeks on an article that pertained to our major. This is the first official summary I’ve written. For most of the assignments for high school, it either involved figuring out what an author meant in a book, or reading something that my teacher decided to teach us. I’ve used strategies involved with writing summaries before, mainly taking main ideas/points from a piece of writing and writing those down. But nothing like an official summary.

          The most challenging part of the process was a combination of the fact that I’ve never written one before and the main one that I chose to do a summary of a shorter article. I chose the article because it was interesting to me and was pertinent to my major. The problem was that it was not that long at all. I was presented with the challenge of summarizing an article into something longer than was actually there. At first, I noticed I repeated myself, but then after some editing, both peer and individual, I came out with a final piece that I was happy with. I always re-read my article to see what I was leaving out and in. I tried to make it as concise and to the point as possible, even though in most scientific pieces, they are already to the point.

          Hands down the most important thing that I learned from this article and that of writing in my field, was that there are two main types in my eyes. One of that is writing actual lab procedures, with the other being reporting the findings of those labs/experiments. I read an article on the latter of the types and it showed me that there isn’t a lot of room for filler talk, just get down to business and say what is needed to be said, while having enough to convey what results you found and what implications it could have for the future. This article was a good example for me to see what writing in my field looked like. ( I don't know how to double space)