20.109(F18) Class blog

For some crazy reason, I had the notion that bench work would be more predictable than all the animal work I've done over the past two years. Boy, I was so wrong. I don't think I've ever seen such ugly error bars, not to mention, class data was all over the place. After letting go of my dream of getting pretty data (or at least data that I would expect), I had to face the reality of Mod1-- having to write  about my ugly data. Writing has never been my strong suit, but writing about something I had no clue about until a month prior? A completely different challenge. I've found that it's personally easier to talk about my research than try to put it into words. There were so many times that I opened up the TR Team Yellow-Blue-Pink Data Summary, looked at it, and could feel all of my thoughts rush out of my head. I found some inspiration in creating figures; I spent a few painstaking hours making a CometChip schematic. Eye pain aside, it was actually... rewarding. An...

Since coming to MIT I’ve sort of been dreading the inevitability of writing an actual research article. I’ve had to read plenty of articles, which just reinforced how complicated and long and probably unpleasant to write they were. I’ve still got a few weeks to go until I have to write one of my own, but after Module One and the data summary the task seems a lot less daunting. I was surprised (and relieved) to learn just how formulaic research articles are throughout the Communications Lab presentations, data summary assignment, and group paper discussion. It wasn’t like I thought that scientists just cranked out full articles off their tops of their heads, but breaking down scientific writing into parts and even sentences throughout this module helped me realize that journal articles aren’t monolithic pieces of writing but useful structures that you fill in with your research (like science Mad Libs!). We’ll see how optimistic I’m feeling about science writing the da...

It’s hard to believe that Module 1 is already over! I definitely really enjoyed being able to experience the scientific process from start to finish (if only a condensed, abbreviated version of it), as given the amount of time that science typically takes, I haven’t quite been as able to experience the whole process as a UROP. One of the elements of Module 1 that I’ve had a hard time getting used to has been the scientific writing. Most of the comments that I’ve gotten about my writing in previous classes have been that I tend to write pretty long, convoluted sentences, which isn’t exactly ideal for scientific writing. Certain sections like the Methods section weren’t as difficult to write because they seem to be relatively standard, and the level of detail that should be included isn’t very ambiguous. Sections like the Abstract, however, were much trickier. Trying to find the correct balance between including enough detail in my sentences and also keeping them concise enough was q...

Reflecting back on Module 1, I would have to say the hardest part was synthesizing the main points of the experiment. By the time we got around to writing the Data Summary, I had forgotten all of the specific details that were integrated into the lab. This made me realize the importance of maintaining a well organized and updated lab notebook, because it made it easy for me to look back and reference what we discovered in lab each day. Writing the methods section also refreshed my memory. Another part that was difficult to digest was the unknown aspect of biology and research. While our group happened to get a CometChip that reflected the expected trend (although we have no clue why our data differed from classmates given the same protocol), we still only had one concentration of statistically significant data between the cell lines. This makes me wonder if that was by chance or if there is a deeper meaning behind that specific concentration. Research in general can definitely be f...

Technical writing is decently intuitive to me because it is typically divided into discrete sections: the abstract, introduction & background, materials & methods, results, and implications & future work. Excluding the abstract, each section logically leads into the next one without the need for elegant transitions, unlike creative writing. I typically like to write the introduction first, as it gives me a good idea of what the general goal of the paper is. It helps me to focus my methods section and the rest of the paper to only include material which is necessary for the goal of the study. I like to write the methods section after, as it reminds me of which experiments were important to the study and thus what data I should include in my results section. When I get to the results section, the introduction and methods have given me a good idea of what figures to make and what data to include. This leads me into writing the implications & fut...

The most difficult part of this module was summarizing the results and emphasizing their importance. While data from each separate experiment was easy to explain as me and my partner began to tie them together, putting the pieces together became more difficult. Additionally sometimes data makes no sense, which isn't ideal when writing a data summary, thankfully the class data saved me and my partner. I enjoyed the fact that most of the results section was focused on the visual representation of data, it made comparing the data sets from our results easier. The student t test while annoying to calculate, did allow me to tell the reader that two separate data sets were significantly different. However once we finished analyzing all the data, telling the readers which data to look at when discussing our main points wasn't as clear. Which experiment best illustrates this point? Shouldn't we have done significance for the other conditions? were just a few of the many questions t...

I really enjoyed Module 1! The topic was very interesting to me and I got to learn new techniques that I can use in the future. While I definitely gained new technical skills, I think I also greatly improved as a scientific writer. In high school I wrote some lab reports, but I never really appreciated the impact of clear and concise writing. 20.109 taught me that being clear and offering enough details without overwhelming the reader is very important when sharing your findings with the rest of the community.   At the beginning of the class I struggled creating a meaningful figure for the cell loading experiment with a descriptive enough caption without giving too much detail. After a couple revisions, I was able to significantly improve this figure and apply the feedback to the other figures I created for the data summary.  I still have a hard sometimes finding that balance between detail and conciseness, but I am looking forward to honing my writing skills i...

All I can think about right now is if writing a shorthand version of a paper with a partner was this difficult, how in the world am I going to write a full paper by myself? Oh well, I'll cross that bridge when I get there. All in all, writing this data summary increased my ability to understand other papers immensely. I used to look at a figure and read the title and read the caption and still not understand what in the world it was showing, but after making and interpreting my own figures I feel confident in my ability to evaluate the authenticity and accuracy of others. I wonder if I can apply that to other parts of my life? I don't understand how soccer players can have so much coordination with their feet, but maybe if I made my own soccer ball it will all fall into place. One of the hardest parts about this data summary was putting what was flying around in my head into concise and precise words on a slide. It is so difficult to figure out what should be put down and wha...

The hardest part of scientific writing for me is a combination of a lot of different things. Finding the reason for the research that is not too broad (aka, cancer in general), but is also not too specific (glioblastoma, since, while our cells were from glioblastoma, we didn’t directly study this). The implications and future-works section was rough for similar reasons to the background and motivation, but it was slightly easier since it was based off of our own data. Also, compiling information to include in the background and motivation is really rough. I think making the figures and analysis was a little easier, though it was definitely very time consuming. It be like that sometimes I guess. I did enjoy making the figures in MATLAB though! Was a lot of fun for me. Something that really helped our team was making a to-do list of everything that needed to get done. I think this is something I will implement for writing my full research report for Module 2....