No Tea, No Shade… Okay, maybe just a bit

Is it over? Is it really done?

Whelp, I guess 20.109 is finished.

Let’s discuss.

I want to first talk about Module 3.

No tea, no shade. I really enjoyed this module, more than I thought I would. I thought that lectures from Angela Belcher were very interesting. The lab ‘activities’ were equally interesting. I also surprisingly enjoyed the Research Proposal assignment. I generally hate greatly dislike any type of presentation, but this was actually interesting. Researching water purification strategies was interesting, and I was quite comfortable speaking about my slides. I was even interested in learning about all the other groups’ proposals. I had a great time despite feeling bogged down with Spring allergies.

Now to talk about the whole of 20.109.

What should I say? Or rather, what am I allowed to say? Joking… Or am I?

(I know I said I wouldn’t throw shade, but I can’t help it. I’ll try to stop now.)

Okay, let me start off by saying I was the most unprepared individual to enter this class. I really had no idea what I was getting into. I am a Course 20 major, so the only reason I chose to take this class was because it is a requirement. And then, when Noreen introduced the class in Lecture 1… Nope. I distinctly remember trying to “Nope” right out of that classroom. I remember calling my mom and telling her how much I was going to hate this class.

It’s hard to find the nice words about what I felt when 20.109 started. And that’s the true tea.

Sue me.

But after struggling throughout this whole semester (i.e. embarrassingly not being able to answer over half of the quiz questions, hardly ever getting a perfect score on my homework assignments, trudging through some labs that I’ll mention later, etc.), I think I can say that this wasn’t so bad. Now, I’m not going to say that this experience slayed my existence, but I do believe that it was fun. Maybe it’s some sort of Stockholm Syndrome, but this was most definitely not the worst experience of my life—that spot is reserved for *shudder* 20.110.

I learned a ton. I struggled a lot. Blood, sweat, and tears were shed. Sleep was lost. But generally, it was cool.

Let’s get into some specifics.

I’m not trying to be rude, but I was…ahem…quite over the BE Communication Lab ‘lectures’. I greatly appreciate the work that they do. I learned so much from them about how to structure the abstracts, introductions, and figures. It was very useful. But I’m not going to sit here and say that they were the highlights of 20.109. The BE Communication Lab was very informative and useful when they came to talk to us, but it was not the most fun of times. That’s all I’ll say about that. Moving on.

I’ve never been in a lab before, so I was very hesitant to be in this class. As the weeks when on, I learned to greatly appreciate this learning experience. I feel as though I have grown so much as a Biological Engineer. Leslie and Noreen (and Maxine during labs) were fantastic instructors and very helpful (thank you very much). The laboratory activities were very interesting and allowed me to better understand the applications of biology and chemistry. The lectures were extremely helpful in understanding the reasoning behind all the labs. It was cool to see many different paths in Biological Engineering. The three lecturers were all interesting in different ways, and I greatly appreciated everything.

There were some times during this semester where I was frustrated (to say the least). One thing that made me the most frustrated was writing Methods sections. It’s hard to explain what made me the most frustrated, but always seeing the same criticisms despite fixing the issues time and time again was quite discouraging. There were times I would get edits on my work where it would say to check the wiki, but was nowhere to be found on the wiki. I spent way too much time looking through the wiki to find “how to properly cite a source or manufacturer” that I eventually just gave up. I probably gave up more times than I should have, but that just how it went down. No regrets.

But now it’s over. Shade was thrown. Tea was spilled. And all I have left to say is, “thank you, and goodnight.”

It’s been real.