Module 1 blog post
Justin Liu
Module 1 and 20.109 as a whole introduced an entirely new way of writing to me. Sure, I had read scientific journal articles and papers before, but writing in a similar style is an entirely different ballgame. I had spent my entire life being taught be humanities classes and writing instructors to convey my ideas in an active voice. I was often criticized for making my sentences too wordy, and just as I thought I had broken into a good habit as I entered college, here I was, struggling on homework to make my methods sections or captions sound "academic." Homework assignment after homework assignment, my time spent formulating sentences decreased slowly but surely.
Thankfully, by the time I got to working on the Data Summary, I somewhat had the general idea about sentence structure down. However, that assignment itself was a struggle and a half. One of the biggest things I struggled with for the Data Summary was trying to convey a message with my data. What was I supposed to say about my two ligands not binding to FKBP12? I could have put in two grains of table salt and probably gotten the same result. But after lots of thinking between my lab/project partner and I, I think we found a way to make it work (grade TBD). This was done by turning the Data Summary into a vague message discussing how the structures of the small molecules were similar to a confirmed binder (rapamycin), but this chemical structure did not guarantee binding to FKBP12. Another struggle was the hundreds of small logistical questions we had that simply came along with this being our first large scientific project. Thankfully, office hours was a lifesaver as I got every question answered across the span of munching on pretzel chips and hummus for five hours.
At this point I am uncertain about what our data will look like when writing the journal article for Module 2. I do know, however, that I have gained intuition on how to formulate a message from whatever data we have. I understand that every single one of our assays in class are done for a reason, and regardless of results, I believe that I will be able to make sense of it. I will take a different approach in simply knowing that I have improved via the Module 1 assignments and taking it from there.
Module 1 and 20.109 as a whole introduced an entirely new way of writing to me. Sure, I had read scientific journal articles and papers before, but writing in a similar style is an entirely different ballgame. I had spent my entire life being taught be humanities classes and writing instructors to convey my ideas in an active voice. I was often criticized for making my sentences too wordy, and just as I thought I had broken into a good habit as I entered college, here I was, struggling on homework to make my methods sections or captions sound "academic." Homework assignment after homework assignment, my time spent formulating sentences decreased slowly but surely.
Thankfully, by the time I got to working on the Data Summary, I somewhat had the general idea about sentence structure down. However, that assignment itself was a struggle and a half. One of the biggest things I struggled with for the Data Summary was trying to convey a message with my data. What was I supposed to say about my two ligands not binding to FKBP12? I could have put in two grains of table salt and probably gotten the same result. But after lots of thinking between my lab/project partner and I, I think we found a way to make it work (grade TBD). This was done by turning the Data Summary into a vague message discussing how the structures of the small molecules were similar to a confirmed binder (rapamycin), but this chemical structure did not guarantee binding to FKBP12. Another struggle was the hundreds of small logistical questions we had that simply came along with this being our first large scientific project. Thankfully, office hours was a lifesaver as I got every question answered across the span of munching on pretzel chips and hummus for five hours.
At this point I am uncertain about what our data will look like when writing the journal article for Module 2. I do know, however, that I have gained intuition on how to formulate a message from whatever data we have. I understand that every single one of our assays in class are done for a reason, and regardless of results, I believe that I will be able to make sense of it. I will take a different approach in simply knowing that I have improved via the Module 1 assignments and taking it from there.
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