For the essays – there are two essays due for this 1st assignment. If you only submit one, the grade starts at 50 so be sure and submit both.
Select a disease/disorder that is not covered extensively in class. I have chosen Myasthenia Gravis. This will be the disease/disorder topic for the whole semester project. Find a research article (from a peer-reviewed journal which includes data) about the disease/disorder; make a copy of it and/or save it; read it carefully; mark-up or high-light important passages to help you analyze it; include the saved copy in your submission; and analyze/summarize it. Your summary paper should be a minimum of one and a half pages single spaced.
Find another article or case study on your selected disorder and write a two-page essay about it. In the essay describe the disorder in detail. When was it discovered? Was it recently? What is the etiology or is it idiopathic? What do we know about the natural progression of the disease? You don’t necessarily have to answer the questions above-those are examples. One example, I find fascinating is the early treatment of hemophilia. They knew certain snake venoms caused the blood to clot and they knew hemophilia made people bleed – so they gave them snake venom! It’s ok to use additional resources if you need them, just cite the sources. In my example I would probably go a bit into the genetics, history, and how they came to use snake venom (what times, how they got it into the patient, etc.)
Formatting instructions for your papers:
Use Microsoft Word
Save using title your name_disorder.
No title page or subtitles
If you want to put your name and title on it-it should be a few lines extra if you do – your name and title will not count towards the page minimum amount.
Single space-if you double space it needs to be twice as long.
Indent new paragraphs.
Use Calibri or Verdana font no larger than 12-point Calibri or 11-point Verdana (yes, most articles use Times New Roman, but my eyesight is poor)
1″ margins are fine but no larger and no large gap at the top or between paragraphs.
Provide reference in APA formatting
For your essays:
Make it professional and put your personal touch in it. What does that mean? For example, if an article says something like “Compliance rates for antihypertensive therapies were found to be 20% lower among low SES African Americans…” I would say something like “while the authors noted lower medication compliance among low-income African American communities, there were no mentions of what social determinants of health may be at play in the increase level of non-compliance…”
Do not pad out your essay with fluff – challenge yourself to expand your vocabulary – nothing says lack of education and experience like an essay that has a plethora of “very” and “I think” in it. Instead of telling me “I think this article was very interesting because…” say something like “the findings suggest enumerable new uses for this new treatment…”
Since it’s an academic paper, don’t use contractions (i.e. do not instead of don’t).
And most importantly—do not plagiarize!!! I do check and you will have to write it all over again. Once years ago, a student tried to plagiarize twice! Literally copy and pasted a whole research article and slapped their name on it and when I pulled them in front of the dean, and they had to do a re-write (because I want everyone to have a chance at redemption) -they did it again!!! So yes, they ended up writing a third paper so I would post their grade. It is just not worth it, and you won’t get any better if you don’t put the work in. I know assignments like this can suck but yes, they are necessary. If you really love a sentence from your article, use it but “put it in quotations and give the author the credit (Gallegly).”
