Looking back at Mod 1
I remember daydreaming last summer about making a scientific discovery. I won't go into too much detail but in my daydream, as soon as I make the this HUGE breakthrough that's going to change the world of biological sciences, I go back home and write out a research paper that I show to my supervisor the very next day. My supervisor looks at my obviously flawless paper and immediately sends it to Nature, completely in awe of this freshman UROP.
Mod 1 in 20.109 has made me realize another logistical concern that invalidates this whole daydream, namely my inability to write a flawless research paper within a night. As you may have guessed already, I grossly underestimated how much time it takes me to communicate science. I have, without fail, spent almost every Monday and Wednesday night so far, realizing that the Mod1 assignment due the next day cannot possibly be done in 20 minutes and then frantically spent an hour or two or three producing material that still probably falls way below the threshold of acceptable scientific literature standards.
Luckily, by the time, the Data Summary due date came along, I became so much more aware of how much time it took me to communicate science according to the specified guidelines and feedback we've received throughout the module. This allowed me and my partner to write out the content of the Data Summary a whole day before the deadline, using Monday (due date) only to make some minor edits.
Beyond time management, I've learned exactly how I need to alter my natural writing style (read: word vomit) to produce a formal and academic paper, that complies to the millions of small rules that dictate how a scientific paper should be. I think 20.109 has already equipped me with some essential communication skills that one would need to thrive as a researcher and as a scientist. I'm looking forward to learning how to hone some of these skills even further via the research article, the journal club presentation, and research proposal presentation in future modules.
On a more controversial note, however, I do think that the current science communication standards sometimes stand as a hurdle in the scientific community's shared goal of finding new and exciting things. As an international student, whose first language is not English, it bothers me a little that sometimes the quality of one's research is defined by their writing abilities, and not by their scientific acumen.
-Tooba Shahid
Mod 1 in 20.109 has made me realize another logistical concern that invalidates this whole daydream, namely my inability to write a flawless research paper within a night. As you may have guessed already, I grossly underestimated how much time it takes me to communicate science. I have, without fail, spent almost every Monday and Wednesday night so far, realizing that the Mod1 assignment due the next day cannot possibly be done in 20 minutes and then frantically spent an hour or two or three producing material that still probably falls way below the threshold of acceptable scientific literature standards.
Luckily, by the time, the Data Summary due date came along, I became so much more aware of how much time it took me to communicate science according to the specified guidelines and feedback we've received throughout the module. This allowed me and my partner to write out the content of the Data Summary a whole day before the deadline, using Monday (due date) only to make some minor edits.
Beyond time management, I've learned exactly how I need to alter my natural writing style (read: word vomit) to produce a formal and academic paper, that complies to the millions of small rules that dictate how a scientific paper should be. I think 20.109 has already equipped me with some essential communication skills that one would need to thrive as a researcher and as a scientist. I'm looking forward to learning how to hone some of these skills even further via the research article, the journal club presentation, and research proposal presentation in future modules.
On a more controversial note, however, I do think that the current science communication standards sometimes stand as a hurdle in the scientific community's shared goal of finding new and exciting things. As an international student, whose first language is not English, it bothers me a little that sometimes the quality of one's research is defined by their writing abilities, and not by their scientific acumen.
-Tooba Shahid
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