Maybe I should change my major to literature with a focus in Kurt Vonnegut (not really)

The Research Article was tougher than the Data Summary. Like....a lot tougher. I struggled despite doing more things right than I usually do. I thought it was going to go really well because I did some things right:

I started A FULL WEEK before it was due. I'm not sure I've ever done that before this assignment. I was home in Indy on Saturday the 15th and was like 

So off I went. Wrote up the results. That was easy...I just put all the figures in and talked about them. 

Wrote the discussion. Not too difficult either...there were a few surprises in the figures, but generally the data made sense and lead to some reasonable suggestions. I handled the methods on Sunday night and took a break on Monday because I was so ahead. Then most of Tuesday...but it's fine. I'm almost done! No worries. 

Tuesday night I got to the introduction. Started with cancer. Easy. Started drafting up some sentences about the cell lines, the treatments, what we did...

ITS SUPPOSED TO BE A COHERENT STORY. My report wasn't. It was a collection of figures and an explanation of what they say...a REPORT, not an article. So now I've got a bunch of writing (50% of which is about to be slashed) and figures and no message. And I read back through the results and discussion to see what my message is...

Yep. There's nothing there. 

There were things, but there wasn't anything I could really get excited about writing. Eventually I picked a story that I found a bit boring and a bit of a stretch and rolled with it, but I needed to double check one thing on a lab computer and incorporate that into a figure. That was Wednesday night I think, and it turns out THAT'S when the project began. 

Since the heatmap showed some unexpected differences between DLD1 and BRCA2- cell lines, I wanted to make sure they were at least responding to the etoposide the same way in the RNA-Seq. But when I looked at the data...

(Favorite meme ever maybe). There was one really pervasive difference in response. I wanted to restructure my paper around this difference because I thought it was cool and unexpected and could make for some interesting discussion. The problem with that? 

I'm not nearly experienced enough to explain what I saw. But you know what? I had a ton of fun trying. I thought and read carefully and was grateful to have a project to really invest myself in. I came up with some ideas I was pretty happy with, finished my coherent story on Saturday around 7pm, proofread, and got it in!

Then I went to lecture for 20.330 on Monday and heard something that debunked all of my ideas as to what was actually happening. In the wise words of a famous pessimist from my home state...