I feel that e-portfolios are a great way to initiate and introduce the process of self reflection. Students are at the starting points of their careers. To effectively plan and direct their career paths, one must do a lot of self reflection.

“Do I like this? Can I do this for the rest of my life? What am I learning from this?”

Taking myself as an example, I was introduced to the concept of self reflection via this assessment. I was able to self reflect and decide my third year courses for specializations in my Bachelor of Medical Science degree.

After much deliberation, I was able to single out genetics and microbiology as specializations I am not leaning towards. I am undertaking an on-going use of self-reflection to further narrow down my one true specialization.

On a lesser note, I had used self-reflection for synthesizing study notes for pathology. I used to think that notes for pathology could be done by hand. But after using too much time to do the initial lecture notes, I was able to go back, reflect and decide that electronic notes was the way forward.

Regarding the e-portfolio allowing me to self reflect; it was the main reason for my updated stance on the media assignment. Answering the questions for reflection on the portfolio allowed me to be efficient in my synthesis of my chosen article, my chosen peer-reviewed texts and hence enabled me to do my best on the media assignment. I was faced with a road-block on my synthesis of the many treatments for Creutzfeldt Jakob disease(CJD). I wasn’t prepared for the extensive new research being done on the topic- potential drugs, genetic engineering and even RNA interference are being harnessed for obtaining a cure for CJD. The question “Why and how did you choose your Media Assignment research topic?” was instrumental in making a firm decision to delve into anti-prion drugs and direct my mental energies towards this topic.

Although at the same time, I must say that this method of using a marked e-portfolio might not help everyone from the cohort.

Some people have the innate ability to synthesize and self-reflect in their own time and might find the e-portfolio process a waste and almost akin to blogging. This phenomenon is seen in people who are not used to keeping personal diaries (which helps prepare the diary-writing public by allowing them to hone writing their thoughts in cohesive sentences)

I am one of these non-diary-writing people. I often felt that I could not fully express my thoughts on paper, particularly my excitement and motivation towards choosing my research question for pathology. I had expressed that it was regarding the use of anti-prion drugs to cure CJD.

Only after much theory work on the media assignment, was I able to fully synthesize the research question. It regarded the proposal of a novel therapy involving two upcoming anti-prion drugs; chosen such that each overcame the limitation of the other.

Coming back to the reflection, I often felt that there were times where I was writing down the obvious, and that my idea of reflection was to answer the questions on Moodle.

Although the difficulty face while writing these notes, I am grateful for the fact that I am given a chance to hone my literary self-reflection skills. In today;s world of careers and employment, self-promotion is key. It is absolutely necessary to project yourself positively towards an employer, be in via CVs, e-portfolios or personally. For honing this ability, this marked e-portfolio is cruicial.

Therefore, despite knowing that I am not the sort of person gifted at projecting their reflections on paper, I am positive that if I keep at the processes required by this assignment, I will be able to overcome this aspect and grow as a person.

A major part of the PATH2201 course I believe is the reflection in the form of this e-portfolio. Throughout the course we will learn a lot of information, right reports, use new methods of teaching and new methods of engaging with the content and meet new people. I believe it is important to be able to reflect on all that we have learnt so that not only will we continue to learn more, but to also know what went wrong, what mistakes we made and how we fixed it. Reflecting also helps with motivating myself to work hard by showing my journey from A to B.

I use my e-portfolio to reflect on what I have learnt, my struggles, my achievements and anything I found was helpful. That way, when I need to revise anything, for example the media assignment though process, everything is laid out for me organised in a weekly fashion. Furthermore, when studying, we do not usually use the same approach every time. This semester for me with internship, work, competitive powerlifting and university studies, I experimented (probably a bit late) many different method for studying, revising and managing my time. I use this e-portfolio to reflect on those processes and to note what worked, what went wrong and how it was resolved in order to help me efficiently achieve those goals of time management and excelling in my studies.

In terms of course content, I use the e-portfolio as a diary almost. I write what I think about each module/ topic and what I liked/ disliked. I also note down what I enjoy doing as well as what is challenging. That way, when I look back, for example, for pre-exam study, I can change the emphasis on each module based on my strengths and weaknesses. I think that this aspect of using the e-portfolio has been most useful to me. I realised that acute inflammation was quite a hard topic for me and was very hard to learn whilst chronic inflammation seemed like a breeze (see tutorial quiz marks) because of this portfolio and changed my way of study.

I believe it is important to reflect because it helps build a better person, whether it be academically, socially or whatever. We learn from mistakes, relive experiences in the past and tap into our thoughts only by reflecting and with the e-portfolio, this allows us to organise our thoughts and learn better and more efficiently.

First couple of weeks were learning cell culture. I’ve worked out that my COS-1 cells grow pretty quickly, so I can either passage them on Mondays and Thursdays with a 1 in 8 dilution (which takes them to confluency on exactly those days) or Mondays/Wednesdays/Fridays with 1 in 6 or 1 in 7 dilutions. No infections so far, so that’s good. My method is basically (for a T-25 flask):

1. Remove media.
2. Wash with 5 mL PBS and removed after washing.
3. Add 1 mL trypsin and incubate at 37 degrees for 5 minutes.
4. Add DMEM, 10% v/v FBS (amount depends on the split; 1 in 8 would be 3 mL)
5. Pipette up and down to break cell clumps.
6. Take some of the cells (again, for 1 in 8 would be 0.5 mL if following this method) and passage into another flask.

Volumes are doubled if moving from T-25 to T-75 (which I’ve done when preparing to plate my cells and drug them).