Slight Growing Pains


Prior to 20.109, I had not read a research article before. Since then, and largely due to this Journal Club assignment, I am not only able to read them, but I am able to understand most-ish of the material. This is very encouraging! I have very little biology coursework/background, so being in classes or spending time with people who have involved UROP positions and other experience is awesome – and slightly intimidating. Because this assignment required me to communicate the details of a scientific paper, it forced me to understand. It was painful and frustrating, but I feel like I have a strong grasp on the material in the paper, and I am incredibly encouraged!

Journal Club itself seems like a great idea for those who want to conduct their own research, keep with the latest news/progress in the scientific community and socialize with like-minded individuals. I personally enjoyed listening and thinking critically about other research papers. I feel like I am much more equipped to consider the scientific approaches and findings now that I have an understanding through the course. Near the end, thinking of questions for the presenter became more natural and more interesting.

As far as the act of presenting, I learned as I went. Retrospectively, more time should have been spent anticipating questions and preparing additional detail or perfecting delivery. I spent hours trying to make sure that I had whited out any additional figures or information. Although I think that it did make the slides look slightly nicer, my mindset was geared toward submission instead of presentation. In the future, I know to keep in mind that I am presenting to curious individuals instead of graders examining the effectiveness of my white-out abilities and alignment of labels. Overall, I believe that I grew as a reader, presenter and audience member. Hopefully, I will have the opportunity to share in a journal club again during my undergraduate.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog Post #2

Edit 4/18 (Forgot to put my name): Justin Liu Originally published 4/8 The Journal Club assignment marked my first time truly understanding a published journal article. Sure, previous UROP positions had required me to get some background information on the project by scanning a few papers. However, all I really did for those was scan the introduction and figures and then have my supervisor actually explain it to me. Thus, I was very unsure of what to expect for this presentation. Will other people care about my presentation? Will I be interested in the material? Will I even be able to understand it? It turns out that the answer to the second and third questions was yes, but I can't exactly speak for the first question. While working on creating the presentation, the most surprising thing was how much of the authors' data that I had to cut out. I felt very reluctant to leave out charts and data that I understood, and it took a lot of mental gymnastics to convince myself tha
Read more

The Journey of A Revision Begins With Office Hours

First major assignment of 20.109 is done, locked in the books. Looking back at it, the entire process from the initial draft to the revisions that were made couldn't have been possible without the availability of the staff and the time spent in office hours.  To the Comm Lab Fellows, thank you for meeting with us at a day's notice. For sitting down and break our abstract apart. For showing us what worked well and what didn't. For helping our abstract go from needs improvement to significantly improved. To Leslie, thank you for bearing with the hundreds of emails we sent your way. For patiently replying to us anytime and every time we needed tips and suggestions. For spending hours in office hours before the first draft was due. For meeting to go over last minute questions before the revision was due.  And to my lab partner, Tooba, thanks for sitting with me late into the night to tear apart our on work. For working with me to identify our weakness and create a s
Read more
The research proposal was a really great exercise in identifying a current problem and potential, feasible solution within a practical time period. While the other modules introduced and familiarized us to the actual lab work and etiquette needed to answer a research question, the goals, quality checks, and troubleshooting considerations weren't thought of by us. That being said, this research proposal was a more difficult assignment in many regards. Browsing through the discussion sections of numerous papers I was interested in gave me an idea of what a next step would be, but considering that I had no real expertise in any of those areas it was still difficult to identify what specific assays would be needed for those next steps. Because of this, I also had a hard time deciding on a general area for my topic. In this regard, listing 5 areas and then trying to blend them with my partners' helped us define a creative topic area that we could look more into. The timescale for
Read more