The hardest part of scientific writing for me is...

At the beginning of the module, I struggled with coming up with captions for figures. I was unsure of what information was relevant to include and the level of detail into experiment methodology that is expected in a caption. However, writing captions for scientific figures definitely became easier after completing and receiving feedback on the first few we had to do. I also found writing the Methods section somewhat challenging as it was sometimes hard to distinguish between information that should be included versus information that would already be obvious to a scientifically literate reader. I most enjoyed the data analysis parts of the Data Summary because I knew what points to cover and what should be elaborated on. I feel that generating figure captions and the Methods section for the full research report on Module 2 will be easier than Module 1 because I have had practice and know what the expectations are. Lastly, I will make sure that I leave myself plenty of time to do the assignment, so that I am not forced to work on it the day before for twelve hours. -Katie Williams






Katie Williams

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

End of semester thoughts

This past semester of 20.109 has constantly put me outside of my comfort zone (from struggling through the research article to stressful class presentations not to mention coding in R). And, I’m realizing now just how thankful I am for that. Coming out of this class, I’ve learned so many useful skills like both presenting and making figures, thinking about how to ask and answer scientific questions, and of course, all of the lab skills it took to culture cells and roll out a cathode (I still can’t believe I actually did that).    And despite all of times I felt like I didn't know what I was doing, the fact that each module was centered around a specific experimental question really helped because there never was a right or wrong answer. It was reassuring to know that any data was still informative data and in general I really liked the aspect of the class that was very much open ended. I think that being able to interpret my own data (ie DS and RA) as well as interpreting dat...
Read more

scroll for the haiku

Image
Wow. 109 is over. The moment 12 minutes were up on the timer (well, 12:20, but close enough) I let out a big breath I didn't realize I'd been holding all semester. 109 really was all over (well, apart from the mini-report but, again, close enough). Words can't possibly describe the experience I've had this semester. @Future 109-ers if you were scared off by the Mod 2 report and contemplated quitting science for good, I promise Mod 3 is a game changer. We walked into Prof Belcher's lecture one day, eyes drooping and brains broken post 14-page report, to play with lemons, oranges, and apples to make batteries (and also get to eat some breakfast!). We finished the module by proposing to build a viral detection system using a shrink gun (im not kidding). It was such a cool experience to play around with ground breaking research and come up with a proposal that sounded pretty?? fancy?? sciencey?? Also, for a moment there, I kinda forgot this wasn't a real pitch...
Read more

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 ...
Read more