20.109 is by far the most
useful class I have taken thus far in my life. After reflecting over my
experience in this class, I have realized how much I have grown as a communicator
and as a researcher. With respect to my writing for example, I have usually
struggled with being verbose. Although I definitely need to keep working on
that, this class has helped me to become much more aware about the ways in
which I can be more concise and still convey a significant amount of
information. This was particularly the case with the methods section. I have
never attempted to write a legitimate methods section with the same components you
would find in real research papers (which I always skipped while searching for
the discussion or conclusion….). I never would have thought that I would
actually develop a level of comfort writing a section that always seemed to be
mumbo jumbo to me.
Furthermore, learning how
to develop schematics and diagrams, as well as how to appropriately describe them
whether you were writing its associated caption, results, or discussion section
was also invaluable. I again, have never really had the opportunity to try consolidating
the important parts of an experiment in a schematic, or to put together and
interpret results that I helped to generate myself. All of these technical
writing skills were difficult at first for me to get used to. Thanks to the
super useful feedback that I constantly received from my professors, however, I
was able to learn how I could organize myself in order to start writing those
components, and learned what I needed to look out for while revising my
writing. I now feel confident tackling any other Module 2-type of research
papers that lie ahead in my future.
Another aspect of my
communication skills that have greatly improved is my ability to give a presentation
in front of a crowd. 20.109 wasn’t the very first occasion during which I gave
a powerpoint presentation in front of a class. However, the stakes have never
been as high as they were here. The simplicity of some other projects I had
presented in high school, and the lack of a real Q&A session after those
presentations made them look like a walk in a park compared to what I went
through this past term. Although my Journal Club presentation was a nightmare
for me, I was able to get ahead of my work and prepare much earlier for my
second class presentation in order to work on my communication skills. Going to
the BE Communication Lab was also very useful in setting my partner and I up
for performing better on our final presentation than we had individually
before.
Time management issues
and not spending as much time preparing for my assignments as I wanted to were
certainly recurring themes in the blogs I have posted the past few weeks. The difficulties
I had in these areas made preparing assignments for 20.109 and fulfilling my
commitments in other classes pretty stressful. In an attempt to save others from following the same tracks I
did, I will continue to emphasize to start assignments and seek help EARLY! If
you find yourself in a vicious cycle of sleep deprivation and the inability to
finish assignments on time, don’t be afraid to ask for additional assistance
from professors or other MIT faculty whom are there to give us a hand.
I would like to that this
moment to also give a shout out to my great lab partner, Skirma. I am really grateful to have collaborated with
her, and for the patience she had even when I messed up badly during lab. I
wouldn’t have made it through the tough moments of the semester without her.
20.109 did a great job of making us work in teams, where we had the opportunity
to develop communication and collaboration skills that will be useful in any
occupation we choose to pursue.
Last, but certainly not
least, I want to thank the best professors I have ever had. This class could
have been terrible without them. I really appreciated their time and
dedication, and for helping me to really see what it means to be a Biological
Engineer. I will always remember them and will cherish all of my experiences in
this class. 20.109 was definitely a lot of work. But I would have never grown so
much as a scientist without that work and the presence of all of the
professors. Once again, thank you!
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