Goals for class

When I signed up for scientific writing, I had no idea what to expect, it just sounded like an interesting alternative to Composition II. Going into Engineering I figured anything to do with science will help my future career, so I signed up. I'm already happy with that decision. The first piece we read was "106 Science Facts and a Truck Full of Baloney", and it was an eye opener from the beginning. I never really thought about how science is presented to the masses, and sadly the information is quite skewed and at times blatantly silly. So to be informed is one of my main goals in this class. The article showed me that even though I would like to think I wouldn't been fooled by phony science, it can still happen. I always knew that advertisers are the main source of regurgitated scientific claims, but I never really understood how bad it is until now. The one that startled me the most was how companies are allowed to put claims on packaging, that though true, have nothing to do with the product. One example was "gluten-free yeast". What's stopping companies from making claims such as "hormone free spinach" or "polyethylene-free beef"? Those things aren't supposed to be in there anyway! After I'm finished in this English course I hope that I can view scientific claims with professional scrutiny and delve deeper into the "why" and "how" of the claims. Besides that I just hope to do really well in the class. The resources are available, I'll just have to stay focused and get my work done ahead of time so I can get it checked over. So other than doing well in the class, and staying informed, I can't really think of anything. I'm sure I'll get a lot more out of the class once the material starts getting assigned and we're writing papers. I feel that I am already a pretty good writer, so I don't think I'll have to work on too much in that department. I do want to make sure that I keep my writing interesting to the reader. The scientific writing area has always been plagued by stereotypes of being "dry and boring" but science is a lot more than that, it's happening around us at all times, and now more than ever we're seeing new scientific breakthroughs that are going to vastly alter our perception of reality.