As we near the end of the semester, reflect on your project for this course and discuss how your thinking has evolved over the semester on your:
Topic area. How has your understanding of the topic evolved? What most surprised you as you dug into your topic area? Did your thinking about the topic area change over the semester? Give an example or two.
Your perception of your writing ability. What did you discover about your talents as a writer in the discipline of biology?
Overall I feel as though this project has changed my thinking on my topic tremendously. It has evolved to think more into the accessibility of researchers when it comes to research more unknown topics. When I was first getting into the research I was shocked at the lack of new information on BDD. In many of the references I researched, the same sort of general information was being repeated. The way Body dysmorphia was tested is what most surprised me when beginning to dive into my research. I was not aware that brain imaging was the key source of information as well as how many references joined their research of BDD with OCD. My thinking on this topic did not necessarily change, I just began to see exactly why it was such a difficult topic to research. Realizing this, I think, helped me immensely towards the end of my paper when I was tying loose ends. As for my writing ability, I found out that writing within the biological discipline is very enjoyable for me. It was very difficult to collect the information on my topic but once I found the right sources I was able to fully write about what sparked my interest in this topic.
Suppose you had two minutes to give someone an “elevator talk” – a short, descriptive summary of what your project was about and what important lessons you learned from it. What would you say?
I would begin by discussing briefly why exactly I chose this topic. As reflective of the amount of research on BDD, it is a more uncommon disorder to want in depth research on. It would be beneficial to indicate why there was a spark of interest there before diving into the main findings from the research paper. After introducing the reasoning behind the topic I would then begin to explain why exactly BDD is so underdiagnosed, as well as the various different testing done on BDD. Ultimately it would go like this:
“Body dysmorphic disorder is a disorder that is commonly diagnosed with other disorders like OCD or Major depressive disorder. It has been found that genetically, it is most similar to OCD. This finding has aided researchers in furthering their research on BDD as well as helping to educate healthcare professionals on the disorder as a whole. The treatments for this disorder resemble those of depression and OCD but also vary a good amount. Cosmetic treatment is the most controversial out of the three options. Overall the disorder is underdiagnosed but is slowly coming to the forefront of research for mental disorders.”