Scientific and Technical Writing is Out to Kill Me

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I swear, this is the first time in my life where I've done poorly in a writing class. Ever since I was child up until last semester when I took Creative Writing, I've never gotten anything below a B in an English-related class. EVER. I've been writing since I could friggin' toddle, and I've managed to place out of expos (which apparently made me some kind of demigod in my freshman dorm), and yet I'm being defeated...by a writing class. I've had to change my topic seven times because the research simply DOES NOT EXIST, the first two drafts of my midterm letter have been horrendous, and I think I'm doomed at this point. There's the final draft, but I am simply not confident in my chances anymore. It's like taking Orgo all over again, only worse because I was initially deceived into thinking I could actually succeed in this class because it involved writing.

What sorts of problems have you had in your previous drafts? Also, what is the topic you ended up settling on?

For the first one, I had trouble establishing the problem...or finishing the assignment, for that matter (It's 4-5 pages, I only had HALF a page).

For the second, I managed to get to 1 1/2 pages, but was unable to jot down the paradigm, develop a plan, or find a patron.

My current topic is simply bullying of children in the U.S. (the one before it was bullying of autistic children, but there's not enough research for that, because apparently the scientific community can't be bothered studying autistics).

The format they are having you write this in seems a bit strange (I'm grad student in a science field and have never encountered this format before). What sort of plan do they want you to have, and what do they mean by patron?

You might try using google scholar to look up research (scholar.google.com). Simply search for bullying and you will come up with a lot of stuff. I also googled "bullying autism" on google scholar and came up with quite a few results. If you run into a paywall trying to look at journal articles, you can try looking at the article from your campus's internet or looking up the journal in your library.

My strategy for writing science papers is to usually do a lot of reading on the subject (usually journal articles) and finding a couple of different 'sides' to an arguement. One group of scientists think A, while others think B. Your problem is then whether A or B is correct and your arguement is which side you think is correct. Summarize the research in the journals, and state why you think some research is better than other research.

So my paper would go something like this: Bullying is a significant problem because of reasons 1, 2, and 3. However, psychologists disagree about why bullying happens. Some think bullying happens because of A while others think it happens because of B. I think A is the stronger theory. The evidence supporting A is stonger than the evidence supporting B for reasons 4, 5, and 6.

Obviously these are just the bare bones of what you need to flesh out the paper. And you don't neccessarily need to say one side is stronger than the other. Both sides may be equally compelling, or maybe neither side has a good arguement, in which case you could conclude that more research is needed in some specific areas.

Has this helped you any?

Edit: To be clear, this is the format of a review paper, and not a paper where you are reporting on your own data.

To clarify, the course is outlined like this:
1.) The entire semester is dedicated to writing/developing a proposal for someone/some company (what we call the 'patron') to address a problem that you've found and want solved.

2.) You start off with a 'white paper' explaining your problem and proving (with research) that it exists.

3.) Then, you start developing your 'midterm letter', a fictional letter to your patron (the person/company/organization you would hypothetically turn to to solve your problem), outlining what the problem is, that it exists, what has been done before, what your plan is to solve the problem (if it's different from what has been done before, explaining why--using research--your method is better), etc.

4.) After that, you do an oral presentation and a bunch of other assignments about your problem (but we haven't learned about that yet).

I sadly don't have much time to look up arguments, as you've suggested, since the final copy of my midterm letter is due next Monday, but I will keep what you said in mind. Thank you.

Ok, that make sense. Basically it is a grant proposal. You might think about using a school as your patron.

The key to technical writing is to remove all of the fluff. Make sure that every letter you put on the page has a reason to be there and adds to the document. Avoid using filler words, and refrain from using complex jargon - keep it as simple as possible without diluting the message. Make sure that any facts (or even opinions) that you mention are referenced to a reputable source. Follow the course's format guidelines to the letter.

Do that and you should do just well! Your description of the class sounds almost identical to the one I took, we had to do the same thing with a proposal and all.