We had only been back in class for two weeks after spring break last weekend, but I was already desperately in need of a break. With the due date for the module 2 research article fast approaching, though, it seemed unlikely that I would get to take much time off over the long weekend, but after working almost all day Saturday and Sunday, I felt like I had made enough progress to take Marathon Monday off. It was probably the first day the entire semester that I did literally zero work, and the most stressful thing that happened to me the entire day was that I somehow managed to lose my sunglasses twice within two hours without even leaving the house, only to find them on my desk both times.
I didn’t actually watch any of the marathon runners that day, but after finally submitting the module 2 research article, I definitely feel like I’ve been running my own marathon these past few days. It was incredibly satisfying to finish all of the writing, though, especially since it looked really official by the time it was finished, and the best part is that I finally have time to pay attention to the work I have for other classes. If only I could stop playing with my ring and actually focus.
There are a few really important things that I did while I was writing the article that helped me a lot through the process. The first was that before I even started writing, I made sure I understood everything that was going on. I was pretty confident that I knew what happened in most of the experiments, but there were a few that took a lot of staring at the figures to figure out. And some that I just had to ask Leslie to explain. Knowing what I was talking about made writing my results section much more straightforward.
The second was that I did the majority of the writing over the long weekend, so by the time the teaching faculty were holding extra office hours, I had a really good idea of what I needed to ask questions about. I probably spent more than 10 hours in office hours this past week, but it was definitely worth it - even when there were so many people there that it became difficult to find opportunities to ask questions, it was a good place to work on the article without too many distractions. While the assignment was required a lot of effort, I think the time spent together in office hours working on it has really brought us closer as a class. This has been particularly important for me since I was one of the few (if not the only) members of my Course 20 class who did not take 20.110 last semester, so I hadn’t really had the chance to get to know most of the other Course 20 2019s yet.
The third thing was that I made sure to remember that the goal of the paper is to tell a story. Unlike many of the writing style techniques I learned in high school English, this idea applies even to scientific writing, where being concise and objective is more important than being creative and eloquent. It really helped me keep my ideas in a logical order and remember to go through my results, introduction, and discussion multiple times to make sure they were consistent. It’s nice not having to discard everything I learned in high school.
And finally, as is equally important when running an actual marathon, I paced myself. While my actual reason for starting early on the assignment was seeing that I had an exam in 6.004 two days ago and another in 7.05 tomorrow and mildly panicking, it allowed me to spend the first few days working only as much as I felt like, which made it much less stressful. And that reminds me, I should probably get back to studying for my 7.05 exam tomorrow. My marathon isn’t over yet.
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