Last semester I took my first psychology class at CCNY. Of the many topics I was exposed to, I found bipolar disorder one of the most interesting. I approached researching my topic using PubMed and Academic Search Complete. My greatest research challenge was finding the sources I felt I could best incorporate into my paper, I overcame this challenge by finding more sources than the minimum requirement and using my outline to cross out the sources that I would not be able to use. I feel my research process has improved from my scientist profile to literature review because of the other databases I have learned about. I feel finding more sources than the minimum was useful because I was able to establish the congruencies between the articles I could focus on in my paper.

Bipolar disorder is a broad topic and there were many leads of discussion in the field I could have used. I found extremely interesting a comorbid condition currently being investigated referred to as “bipolar-OCD”, a unique disorder when a person can experience both obsessive-compulsive systems and bipolar symptoms. The greatest challenge I experienced as I composed my assignment was writing a paper without a central focus, unlike many papers I have written in the past, the literature review aimed to create a discussion with the reader about the discussions currently available on my topic of research.

My scientist profile informed the approach to the literature review because the organization process was the same. I prepared my draft and prepared for the workshop where I was able to receive some feedback on where my paper should head. I then used the draft and feedback to guide the rest of the paper as these methods helped me write the scientist profile. My editing process has changed between this paper and the scientist profile because I am aware of the flaws in my writing, one of my primary flaws was framing and source integration. While I was editing this paper, I focused on any areas that the framing or source integration did not work and deleted or attempted to modify them.

I feel I was successful at addressing the assignment prompt because I was able to fulfill the guidelines. I was provided with many articles that I could have used as models when completing this assignment. I found the Nuttman-Schwartz best suited for my assignment because I chose a topic related to the field of psychology which revolves around disorders. Having the model articles along with my draft and feedback helped me to complete this assignment successfully.

In completing this assignment, the course learning outcomes I addressed were “Practice using various library resources, online databases, and the Internet to locate sources appropriate to your writing projects” and “Strengthen your source use practices (including evaluating, integrating, quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, analyzing, and citing sources).” The first outcome I addressed because the drafting process required using the topic we wanted to research to browse databases to find the sources best suitable for use in our paper. The second outcome I addressed because the literature review relied heavily on framing and source integration, in the case of this assignment we would be synthesizing the information available to us for the reader to best understand.

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