Having more freedom, feeling more like a researcher
My expectation that Mod2 will be a similar experience to Mod1 is now completely shattered at this point. Did I ever imagine that this class would become so computational and presentation-heavy? (Maybe I should have read the syllabus more carefully) Despite many differences, I realized that I am enjoying Mod2 more than Mod1. This is not only because I like computational work, or because we get to read many primary literature, but also because we have some power over the experiments.
When thinking back for Mod1, I realized that all of the tasks completed were instructed by the instructors. Yes, I did learn a lot, but there was no space to add my personal flavor except for the final draft. And now in this current module, we have so much more freedom!
The original R script is given, but we can modify it to analyze whatever way we want. We can choose a paper by ourselves for the journal club presentation. And moreover, we can design our own cell viability experiment to test our hypothesis!
The last aspect especially excites me. To explain the surprising result students obtained last spring, our group put quite a bit of thought and came up with our hypothesis that it might be the seeding number that contributes to the difference. Since etoposide affects cells dividing faster, the density of the cell and the amount of contact inhibition might be playing a role here. Discussing with my partners to come up with this hypothesis was the experience I enjoyed the most in this class so far.
Well, the result is yet to come. In a week, we will know whether our hypothesis was correct. But regardless of the correctness, I still believe this freedom gave us the opportunity to express our creativity, making us feel like a true researcher.
When thinking back for Mod1, I realized that all of the tasks completed were instructed by the instructors. Yes, I did learn a lot, but there was no space to add my personal flavor except for the final draft. And now in this current module, we have so much more freedom!
The original R script is given, but we can modify it to analyze whatever way we want. We can choose a paper by ourselves for the journal club presentation. And moreover, we can design our own cell viability experiment to test our hypothesis!
The last aspect especially excites me. To explain the surprising result students obtained last spring, our group put quite a bit of thought and came up with our hypothesis that it might be the seeding number that contributes to the difference. Since etoposide affects cells dividing faster, the density of the cell and the amount of contact inhibition might be playing a role here. Discussing with my partners to come up with this hypothesis was the experience I enjoyed the most in this class so far.
Well, the result is yet to come. In a week, we will know whether our hypothesis was correct. But regardless of the correctness, I still believe this freedom gave us the opportunity to express our creativity, making us feel like a true researcher.
Comments
Post a Comment