At the end of the mod you're another mod wiser

This weekend has been far too unproductive for me to gallivant about looking for appropriate memes, but I felt a brief Les Mis reference to start things off was merited.

The proposal presentation was by far the most enjoyable assignment, despite the long hours of reaching dead ends and, you know, presentations. Going through the process of actually designing a potentially feasible project, working out the kinks of experimental parameters, gathering resources, considering every aspect of a proposed method — this, more than anything else, made me feel more ready to be an independent researcher. At the very least, the next time I meet a Ginkgo Bioworks rep, I'll definitely have something concrete to talk about! I've long thought that they needed to make the transition from producing perfumes to something that's less of a luxury good. Why not start with biodiesel?

Other thoughts on Mod 3:
- I greatly appreciated Mod 3 been less of the "typical" breed of bioengineering. I would have liked to experiment with the actual genetic engineering part of it, rather than spend a rather irksome hour rolling out little pieces of cathode material.
- I know it's easier on the instructors to do something they've done before, but the small novel aspect of Mod 1 was part of its charm. It would've been nice to have done something with Mod 3 that keeps the general methodology but introduces more novel elements - even something as small as having as propose a range of AuNP concentrations to try, rather than just pick randomly from a pre-determined set.

Things overall about the course that struck me as possible areas for change:
- I loved RNASeq. Would have liked to be able to connect the analyses we carried out to the data collection a bit more, to get a feel for the scope of things.
- Grading for Mod 2 could have been less opaque.
- Hmm. I'll update as I think of more.

Many thanks to everyone involved in 20.109 — it's been my favorite class at MIT, and it helped me explore fields of research I had not heretofore considered. Looking forward to another wonderful two years with the 20-19s!