Lots of Head Scratching

The phrase, "beauty in the struggle" has never meant so much or been so true. The most significant struggle was overcoming the fear of a research article. Simply sitting down and trying to plan the order or the layout of figures seemed like an enormous hurdle. When writing, I felt like every word had to be in the perfect place, otherwise it would cause an avalanche of other problems that would negate any positive points of the paper. It wasn't until late in the writing process that I reflected on my work and my worries and realized, "My professors do not want me to stress about finding a life-altering phenomenon. They want to test my ability to gather, analyze and efficiently communicate the data." From that point on, I was able to take a much more objective and effective approach to writing. Then, out of the blue, I found myself enjoying my role as a biological engineer/data scientist.

On that more technical note, I really appreciated this module for the robust approach to tackling a research question that would have caused a freshman Cecil to declare course 6... or 15... or 21. The skills and experience that I gained through the module encouraged me for future urops/research in general. I definitely appreciated the exposure to RNAseq analysis in R. I feel like that is a very common and important experience that I am grateful to have under my belt. Although it is all very new, and it will probably take me many times to feel proficient in similar experiences and analyses, I am now aware that I am capable of doing it.

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