Almost done!!!!!!

While writing this barely three hours after finishing our Mod 3 proposal presentation, it's finally sinking in how exhausting that process for the proposal assignment was. But, being done is super invigorating (and the mini-report feels like such a small hurdle after the presentations).

I think the proposal presentations, above all, showed me how hard real science is. We do experiments and are exposed to a lot of techniques in lab throughout the semester, but we don't see what goes on behind the scenes to design these experiments and build up the process, and building up an original project from scratch is so much harder than it sounds. You have to browse the almost literally infinite source of literature and research on the web to find pieces to build up an original idea. You have to figure out what goals you want to accomplish and what steps you want to take to accomplish them. You have to find validated methods and assays and experiments that go toward your goals. You have to consider every possible little thing that could go wrong. You have to be familiar with other research relevant to your idea. And frankly, it's a lot to organize in your head! Professors make it look so easy.

The hardest part for me was actually the small details -- how exactly would we execute our methods in the lab? Finding ideas of how to investigate certain problems was manageable, but the bottleneck was definitely being biologically literate enough to know how to test and prove things in the lab. And that's definitely something that comes with time and experience in the field, but an overwhelming amount of research went into making sure we could justify how to do everything we were proposing.

Now that it's over, I can properly appreciate the amount of effort that went into the project and how beneficial the experience will be in future project-based classes. Hearing everyone else's ideas was really cool and eye-opening to see the different ideas floating in the literature and how our classmates chose to combine them into new ideas!!!!

Thank you so much to the teaching staff for a great semester :)