20.109(F18) Class blog

So the worst part about taking a late day is forgetting about all the follow up assignments. Just like what I'm trying to do now. Make up a blog post because I completely forgot it was due 24 hours after I submitted my M2 report. Firmly timed deadlines are the bane of my existence. A little bit about myself-- most of the time I spend on my assignments happens while I'm on shift (I work fairly often on the student ambulance). Usually, my schoolwork and EMS don't come together to make life hard. Writing the M2 report was great! Having steady assignments due over the course of multiple weeks made finalizing the report much less daunting than I expected. I had multiple figures done well ahead of the deadline, multiple sections of my methods portion was fully written, and I already outlined my introduction. I had the majority of the report finished roughly an hour before the deadline and then-- a call came in while I was on shift. Which meant, of course, my assignment was 100% g

The research article was one of those assignments that I’m sure was very important to my growth as a scientist and communicator and I’ll probably look back on frequently when I’m doing future science writing assignments and whatever, but boy, it was rough to write. I’m really glad to have this assignment behind me, even though as I submitted the paper (late) I felt like it still wasn’t as good as it should have been. I think that a lot of my stress about this assignment just came from the dread leading up to it, so hopefully now that I’ve gotten one research article under my belt the next one will be better. The assignment wasn’t all bad! I liked analyzing the data and putting together the figures and schematics, but getting through the writing was definitely a slog.

Writing the module 2 report was easily, though let's be clear it was far  from easy, the hardest and worst thing I have ever had to do during my time here at MIT. I'm not saying that in a negative way. It's just facts. I think what made is so difficult was that it felt endless. At least with exams you know it's from 7:30PM to 9:30PM and fin , but with this report man, you really didn't know when it was going to end. It's like, you've put in 20 hours and you still ain't done. What made matters rougher was that you put in all this work, and you're not even sure it's good at the end. That being said, I think it was a very formative experience. I for sure did not like the added stress of the fact I was turning it in late, but I did like the pressure to write a whole research report. Now I know how much work it requires-- a whole lot. I want to learn from this experience and say to myself, "I never want to be in this position ever again,"

It is such a relief to be finally done with this Mod2 report. I took a big L for not starting this report much, much sooner but thank god for the lenient 20.109 late policy (writing this blog post late too...). This weekend was one of my most stressful times here at MIT so far and that's saying a lot. But I did learn about how much work goes into scientific writing and I really, really don't like it. Some people are just better at this and I am not one of those people. The hardest part for me was the results section, where we had to interpret our--lets say mediocre--data. Statistical analysis was extremely time-consuming and explaining the data took even longer. I wish we spent time repeating our fermentation assays because that would have made life easier. At least it's going to be smooth sailing in 109 from here on out..right?

This was definitely the most intimidating writing assignment that I’ve had to take on during my time here at the ‘tute, and it was definitely super overwhelming. Once all the data was collected, I had a few days where the only thing that would go through my head when I tried to start writing is: “now what?”. I couldn’t tell you how many times I opened up Word or PowerPoint, stared at a blank page, and then closed my laptop. Even though we had homework assignments along the way to serve as handrails for the assignment, I still found myself fumbling. Where to start? I tried starting with the figures, as suggested by... well, everyone. But instead of a blank screen, I was staring at multiple (five, to be exact) spreadsheets filled with numbers waiting to be analyzed. As torturous as it was for my eyes, I was able to gain some traction, and motivation, to actually start writing. I had a vague idea of what I wanted to say about all the data and word vomit ensued. My writing process ended up

I didn't expect a written paper to be so much work, there were clear guidelines on what needed to be written, and the purpose of the paper was pretty clear. But despite this, writing the MOD2 paper took so much time and energy. Every part of this paper required attention to detail, it really gave me perspective into how much work is put into scientific papers. The most straightforward part for me was writing the intro, since the main motivation behind the study was understandable, but even relating that purpose to the experiments we conducted took time and research. The method section was the worst part for me, I always try to err on the side of caution so I was tempted to go step by step in the method section, however that quickly proved to be futile. It was difficult for me to try to piece together a clear timeline that was easy to follow but omitting certain details; additionally separating the experiments became a minor hassle. I love making graphs, so the results section was f

This weekend was meant to be a relaxing weekend away from the stress of MIT...THINK AGAIN. This weekend was instead spent pouring over my research paper. None of the relaxing, all of the editing. At the start of Mod 2 I told myself that I would have the research paper done by the time I left for my little Maine vacation, thinking that it would all be okay. (Narrator: “It would not, in fact, all be okay.”) Turns out, it’s pretty difficult to write a paper with no data! Who knew! The fact that we got our data the Thursday before this was due was a little bit of a rough time. I was actually pretty successful with working on the paper as much as I could but forming the critical parts of the paper, such as the end of the introduction, the discussion and the results section was pretty difficult without any concrete findings. In the future, I will try and not schedule get-away weekends right before big assignments are due. Or lower my expectations of the relaxation to be had. Or jus

I never thought the day would come when I felt literally emotionally attached to my results, but it did on the last day of Mod2 when we saw the ethanol production levels. I was so perturbed! Not only were there no clear observable trends, but the only clear point was that the cells with the CRISPR system in the optimal conditions were simply the worst at producing ethanol out of every single sample.  Thinking I would get ahead, I pre-wrote much of my introduction, hypothesis, some discussion points, and even pre-planned my figures. But alas- come Thursday, I had to remake that all to tell a story that made sense with the data we got. One thing I will say is that if I did learn anything about scientific communication, I learned the importance of keeping track of your work so that people in future years can use it! A big part of our data analysis ended up depending on the work of those before us who had targeted the same gene, and it was so helpful when their data was org

This weekend was by far the worst weekend to have to work on this report. I don’t think I have ever put so much time into one project in my whole academic career. I honestly feel like I could have spent a million more hours working on it. I am just glad that it is finally over. I really thought this module was much more interesting than the first, even though our data didn’t really show that our experiment was that successful. Thank you Leslie for answering 10000 of my emails! I wish I could’ve come to office hours. It probably would have been more helpful. I just need a break from work, but now on to studying for 320! Not having lab and lecture has really been helpful for my studying though.

Module 2 went by so fast. I was actually really looking forward to writing the research article, because it felt like it would be a good experience of what research writing was like, and a good way to test my own abilities as opposed to writing with a group. When I was actually writing the article, I found myself struggling with various aspects of the writing process. There was so much data. Analyzing all of the data and then deciding what parts of it were most important to include in my results section took me so long. I agonized over analyzing data and making figures for the large part of the weekend, and even though I knew that I still had to write a discussion and abstract after writing the results section, I just could not find it in me to speed up the analysis process. I think this aspect is where visiting the BE CommLab would have been helpful to me, as I could have asked them for feedback about how I was deciding to emphasize certain results over others. Unfortunately, the fe

Oh I feel like I have so much to write about Mod2 paper. I was so hopeful when I looked at the colorimetric assay and saw the last one had most strong color. But once after I analyzed the data, then my hope’s gone. Nothing in the data was significant! Well, writing a research article is hard. And writing a research article with insignificant data is much harder! Most of the time I wrote my research article, I was not sure what the title should be, what should I needed to emphasize about or what I should conclude about my research. I remembered that I was so excited when I learned that we would use CRISPRi for metabolic engineer! Woah all the buzz words! But what to do when your data is not significant? Then I finally found some trend that might explain why my data was insignificant, but that trend was not really relate to the research initial purpose or background. Then half of time was used to decide again whether I should talk more about that trend or not. And my time managemen

I am very happy to have finished the mod2 research article. It definitely took a lot of work to gather my thoughts, be concise, and present valid claims as to why data might not have matched our hypothesis. (It’s real great seeing data with error bars spanning more than the value itself and going into the negative y-values :’) ). I had a bit of difficulty writing down my analysis of the figures without sounding super repetitive, but I think reading sections out loud helped me edit better. I definitely wished I had spent more time editing, but I think I was able to communicate my main points. One resource that was very helpful to me was going to office hours and getting all my questions answered. Shout out to the 20.109 staff for having OH on the weekend and bringing us food! :) The help was very much appreciated and it helped a lot throughout the writing process. I am very glad I put in a decent effort with the homework, because by the time the research article came around, I a

So the Module 2 paper turned out to be a very stressful series of cramming to finish up the paper after having a hectic week and getting triggered from my ptsd of writing research papers and literature reviews during an internship. Could I have planned far ahead and gotten the paper done the prior week? Like, maybe... but ultimately I ended up finally getting a chance to sit down with my paper a few hours before it was due (see meme 1) and the exhaustion of that week definitely just did not help with my productivity. I ended up taking Leslie's advice and utilizing the late day to really polish things up and also be less stressed about cramming to finish. This also gave me a chance to set up a meeting with Sean to get quality feedback on my final draft. Noreen's office hours were also a valuable resource that allowed me to get direct feedback on areas of confusion. Leslie was another MVP I dedicate this paper to because she was very responsive to my million emails asking

To write my research article, I used a mix of staff help along with people not in the class. When I was done with the rough draft of my research article, I printed it out and read it again. For some reason, this enabled me to read this article more objectively, and less as if it was my writing. Once this was finished, I gave my article to a friend that has no understanding of anything I was writing about. I asked him to tell me which parts of my paper (barring the methods) didn't seem to be clear enough for an audience with little knowledge about CRISPRi and experimental goals. Because all the people in the class I talked to about the paper along have a solid understanding of CRISPRi and what we used it for, it seemed like it would be useful to get an uninformed person's opinion. One other resource I utilized in the writing of this research article was office hours. For obvious reasons, the instructors of the course provided the best information on figure

After this assignment, I realized how hard is it to get an A in difficult classes. I spent cumulatively probably 30 hours writing this report because I'm horrible at writing. I always feel like my wording isn't clear and my structures are bad. I also felt like throughout this assignment I was constantly repeating what I've already said but it was a really frustrating process to try to fix it I'm also just super exhausted because we're at that point of the semester so everything is a struggle really. But I'm super glad it's over and I am in a sense proud I put together a 13 page research article showing my knowledge in metabolic metabolism to increase acetate production in E. coli. I learned quite a bit about CRISPRi and the wet lab protocols to get to our final results. I really wish I was a better writer/communicator I always degraded myself and never liked the way I phrased things. It truly is a remarkable skill to not only be extremely knowledgabl

I think it’s safe to say that the Mod. 2 report has been hyped up for a while. We’ve been working towards this point for months, with every assignment and with every lab. Somehow the time’s blown by and now it’s over. The process of writing the mod 2 report was different than I imagined. Despite all of the practice and feedback we’ve had I felt very uncertain about a lot of this assignment. What tense to make certain sections, where to put certain explanation, what areas should summarize, what areas should expand. I found answers to some of these, but for others I found myself at a loss. I went through countless revisions, rewording, rephrasing, finding new sources, finding better sources to improve the flow and composition of my document. Each time I think it got a little better, but I was never really sure when it was ‘done’. I am happy with my final product but I have so many lingering questions. While that’s a somewhat unsatisfying way to conclude such an important as

As the days in M2 continued to pass, I dreaded writing the research article more and more. My train of thought every day was, "Maybe I'll get hit by a bus on my way to class today so I won't have to do this assignment." Alas, here I am, writing this blog post after turning in what I hope was a quality paper. I always hated writing essays about myself, or an event that happened to me. I always felt self-conscious, like I was talking myself up. As such, I thought maybe writing scientific papers would be a much easier process for me. nope With this paper, I continuously struggled with what exactly to include in each subsection. It would go from too much information, to not enough information, to feeling like I was just repeating myself over and over again. The thing that worked best for me was just taking my time. Instead of just writing things down to make a rough draft of what I needed then going back and doing a lot of editing, I took the time to write each sente

In the past, public speaking has terrified me. I’ve had to give talks about all sorts of things and I had never given a presentation without freaking out beforehand. However, for some reason the journal club was different. As I was thinking about why I wasn’t terrified once I finished presenting, I came to the realization that confidence personally plays a huge role in how scary public speaking is. This was maybe the first time I had given a presentation like this where I actually prepared a while in advance and I knew the material I was talking about well. I think because I had confidence in my understanding of my journal article and how the authors got the results they did along with confidence in my ability to present the main points of it, this made the actual presentation much less scary. The most helpful thing I did that made the whole project easier was printing out my paper. I know, it sounds super obvious. I initially read the article multiple times on my