M1Done

M1Done

Well that went by quickly. I think I’m not the only one who feels like these past few weeks of 109, and indeed the semester, have blown by. But here we are, Team Yellow-Blue-Pink has loaded its final CometChip, and handed in our Data Summary. We’ve covered a lot of ground in what feels like not much time, and I know that I for one have learned a lot already. With Module 1 more or less under our belts it’s time for me to reflect on what has been my biggest challenge over the past few weeks. While a few things jump to mind, such as concision, and figuring out where I should provide details or interpretation, and where I shouldn’t, the biggest struggle for me by far, has instead been the ordering of ideas.

There were a lot of moving parts to Module 1, and I know that my understanding of these pieces definitely evolved quite a lot as time went on. I realize only in retrospect how little I understood about what the goal of the module was, and what we were studying, when we loaded our first comet chip. I think the hardest part of the writing assignments therefore was trying to put the pieces together in a coherent order. I know that one thing my UROP supervisor has always told me to do is to ‘find the story’. And finding the story of this module was something that was quite hard for me. Throughout the past few weeks, the hard part for me hasn’t been figuring out what to say, but figuring out in what order to say it. Do I talk about cancer and then oxidation, should I do repair first, or damage first, do I mention NHEJ at the same time as BER, or do BER after oxidation and NHEJ later when I mention DNAPK? It took me hours upon hours just to write the background and motivations section, I kept writing out two or three bullet points, then deleting them. I kept swapping sections around, shuffling the topics, rewriting them again and again so that the concepts would flow better. It was an exercise of sense making, of me trying to first sort out for myself how all the bits and pieces fit together, and then trying to de-convolute that into something that would be readable to a broader audience.

I think that finding a message, and then ordering all of the parts needed to tell that message, will be my biggest challenge moving forward. However, I do have a couple of techniques for how to approach this better Module 2. I think the most important thing for me will be to write the background and motivations section first. When writing the Module 1 data summary, this section provided a really useful way for me to guide what needed to go where and understand how to organize things. It was also a chance to put all of the big ideas in one place, and iron out some of the rough patches in my understanding. I definitely think this is where I’ll be starting when it comes time for the Module 2 report.

Overall, I’ve had a really good time in 20.109 so far. Jade and Kayla have been a lot of fun to work with, and the teaching staff have been really fantastic and supportive. Though I can’t believe it’s here already, I’m looking forward to Module 2, and whatever surprises it has in store.