BE 20.109(S19) Class blog

It's done. It's over. 20.109 is over. All those night, all those hours spent staring at blank documents. They're over. I'm not sure how I feel yet honestly. I've always been slow to process things (much to lab partner's annoyance) , and this is no less. I feel relived I guess. I don't know. The project proposal, and mod 3 in general, made us look at the greater context of biological engineering. From designing our own experiments to exploring a novel use of phages, I think module three is by far my favorite. I guess I would like to first shout out W/F blue team and my partner, jsyao. It's been real. Thanks for everything, from the swipes to enduring my semi-lucid state. I think we are greater than the sum of our parts (laughs in mod 2). We are class-A team. don't @ me. For the assignment itself, I felt that it was pretty fun. We got to pick something that pique our curiosity and try to create something viable from it (although 50 years of liter...

Coming into lab and doing all sorts of cool experiments definitely was a time. I'm still super excited to walk up to people and them be like: 'you're building a battery out of what??" I've definitely grown as a biologist and as a researcher and I have the teaching staff and my peers to thank for that. So for now, this is my peace out, but not without a meme first!

MOD3 was really a ride. I feel like people made it seem like after the research article life was easy and that is INCORRECT. While MOD3 was no where near as brutal as MOD2, I still put a ridiculous amount of hours into the research proposal. The best part of the research proposal, for me, was working with my lab partner on it. In between practice runs of our presentation we played phenomenal music (including but not limited to Breaking Free and Love Story). It was really fun to have a partner to support you during the process and it helped me hold myself to a higher standard than I do sometimes when it's just me. Having a lab partner that you both enjoy being around and also trust and respect is a major key to having an enjoyable 109 experience. And with that 109 is basically over (except for the mini-report - another "easy" thing that is actually hard and time consuming?? the world may never know)!!! This class has been crazy. I have felt myself grow so much as a sci...

Blogging about the struggles that come with 20.109 is almost therapeutic at this point. When I submitted the research article, I blogged about it right after submission and I remember how much better I felt, knowing that there was an outlet where my predicaments could be read and acknowledged. So first off, kudos to blogging and taking out time to process and talk about *feelings*. We don't do enough of that at MIT! I'm glad this class ended (minus the Mini-report) on a high-note. And by high note, I mean by showing me exactly why I chose to be a biological engineer. The first assignment of Mod 3 had me reeling with joy and despite the fact that I had a hell week then and should have been preparing for an exam, I took my sweet time to find the most exciting news in the world of biological engineering. Every research paper I read, left me absolutely in awe and I looked up people to contact in case I wanted to do research with them at some point or just have a conversation and...

109 was a soft-skills class... A much needed soft-skills class.  As much as I liked the lab component of 109, learning how to communicate science effectively was definitely the most valuable thing I got out of the class. I could have just read papers and UROPed to learn about the topics we covered in class, however there is no way I could have gotten as much practice communicating without this class. After surviving 109 I feel confident in my ability to write about science, as well as my ability to give a presentation on the topic. While I certainly am not ready to defend a thesis, or present a research proposal to a real panel quite yet, I am much more confident in my abilities than I was before.  Also, learning how to make figures payed off. I had to make some for my UROP, and it felt good to be able to represent a semester's worth of hard work into figures without my supervisor's guidance.  Thanks to all involved in the behind-the-scenes of the class. I'm ...

This was my favorite project to work on. I loved the collaboration and freedom. Usually in my UROP, I am just doing smaller projects that my mentor tells me to do within a larger goal, so this was a whole new world. The process, from posing ideas to researching, and then coming up for a proposal was very engaging. When we started our pitching ideas, we had so many. A challenge was trying to focus on just one idea without branching out to others. This process made me realize how capable I am to come up with new ideas. Often, I doubt my ability to be innovative as it sometimes seems other people have “already thought of that idea”. Further, I never connected research with creativity for some reason, but this process has shown me that there is creativity within research .   Once we chose a specific topic and goal, researching (to the best of our ability) was so interesting. I loved learning new topics and subjects. Thanks to our journal club, it was easier to sift throug...

Yeet! It's over. I have lots of feels! 1) This class was super cute in that it gave me MAJOR high school vibes (guys, I peaked in high school so this is a major compliment). Our class size was small, our professors could at least recognize our faces (if they didn't know our names already), we had homework due every class, we interacted often, there were quizzes, attendance was mandatory, etc. This class set up is what 8.01 TEAL wishes it could be. I liked how this class made me remember what it's like to learn together in a group as opposed to individually. 2) Shout out to Fransisco for dealing with me and holding me accountable this semester. :) I definitely tried a lot harder knowing that a lot of assignments were based on teamwork/ team grades. 3) I made friends in Course 20!!! (hopefully this sentiment is mutual and reciprocal) 4) I'm so proud of all of us for doing such amazing things. 5) Lot's of suffering was felt this semester but a) is there ever not s...

20.109 took more hours than my other 3 classes combined some weeks. The class demanded more of me than any MIT class I have had so far. What made it so challenging was that throughout the process, I had no idea what on earth was going on. Every day we learned new material and were expected to apply it rapidly. Not only were we learning so quickly, but we had to pivot between different skill sets. Be a good scientist! Keep a good lab journal and keep the lab clean. Be a good researcher! Conduct assays you've never done before properly. Avoid contaminations. Be a good communicator! Write something. Present something. Write a different thing you don't know how to do. Become an expert on somebody else's work. Be a good time manager! Good luck with this one. I floundered my way through 20.109, constantly asking "why are we doing this." And then it alllllll became clear. When I was in high school, people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was good ...

I guess spending 15-20 hours a week with someone will really bring you together (or make you hate each other, it really depends). Don't worry Grey team , I love ya guys. Glad to say that regardless of how jaded we were by the time we got to Mod 3 (seriously, we named our Google Drive folder for this module "we almost out"), we still managed to laugh our way through the assignments (and not the maniacal variety, the normal/fun kind). Getting through this research proposal at 11 pm in the Stud definitely was not the most enjoyable, but actually ideating and creating our proposal was super fun. It was weird to see how our seemingly outlandish ideas actually had scientific backing and how they came together to create a cohesive goal. Figuring out how to organize these ideas into a cohesive (and succinct) presentation was probably the hardest part. And when we finally thought we worked out all the details of our project, a question would come up that would raise anothe...

How I felt after turning in the research article ^^ Sleep deprivation is a thing. I had no idea why it would take so long to write everything but it did. Like 5 entire days dedicated only to it with very few hours sleep (& 2 late days!!). To be honest though I think I messed up a lot because my results took the longest and I realized it was because I was mixing interpretation in there which is a NO NO. Once I started writing my discussion and had a better idea of what the big picture is, things came a lot easier and I actually felt like I somewhat knew what I was talking about. I think next time I'll start writing the discussion or intro before the actual results. Im pretty glad there's no lab tomorrow so I can catch up on some sleep :)))