Module 1 Reflection

Looking back on the first month of 20.109, I would believe that the class is one of the most work-intensive classes in the bio-engineering major, if not among all classes at MIT. Being one of the few juniors in the class, and have taken other lab classes and CI-Ms, I see 20.109 to be very unique in that it exhibits great balance between training both writing skills and experimental techniques. While the class and the lab hours are dedicated mostly on developing intuitions and skills on the relevant techniques, the homework assignments and the respective feedback provide us an ample of opportunity to practice on scientific writing.

For the first couple weeks of class, I must admit that I was baffled with the work load. Not only is there a huge amount of assignments, but each assignment also contains a non-trivial amount of thinking. Even when I was writing a simple one-paragraph-long method section, I had to contemplate on every single sentence to see whether the expression was the most concise way of stating the information. But then I realized that, even with this short of a time span, my scientific writing skill has improved. The second time the method section was assigned, it took me less time to construct the paragraph, and the third time even shorter. As anything is difficult the first time, and that the class is filled with new contents, the first month for me was a time of perseverance, learning each component of scientific writing. But hey, these struggles are already starting to pay off!

Not all experiments went well, and that sometimes makes you sad (esp when you write the data summary), but at least I can see my growth! Now as the second module is starting, I hope I can improve my writing skills further but also get good data!

~Yotaro