Well it's finally submitted

I think it was at about 11 am Friday morning when I realized exactly how far down I had fallen.

I was decked out in sweat pants and a sweatshirt; my baggy eyes and a thermos of coffee in my hand were indicators to the general population of MIT that we had a rough week in Course 20: Module 1 methods, that 20.320 problem set, the abstract and data summary. The past 72 hours have taught me that this class is not one that anyone can afford to procrastinate in. I’ve also learned that organization is essential to this class.

The last time I was in any sort of lab setting was, no joke, 11^th grade AP Chemistry. I was pretty terrible at staying organized throughout Module 1, partly because I prefer writing on paper to keeping word docs and partly because I had no idea of the troubles to come. The data analysis and summary section took me much longer than it could have if I had been more organized about keeping in depth lab journals and resulting data all in one place, rather than flipping through my little notebook every time I needed to check something.

It’s not just about organization throughout the module, though. When I was writing my report, my first approach was to randomly start assembling figures I thought were at all relevant to the module and write up their captions. It wasn’t until later that I realized the degree of intricacy involved in planning out discussion sections that match with what the figures show. I ended up having to tailor my figures and captions to the demands of my discussion sections. I feel like it’d have been much easier to plan it all out first in a general outline before making my figures.

That being said, I’m impressed with everything we’ve managed to get through so far. Seeing it all laid out in my abstract and data summary gives a certain sense of accomplishment, and I’m sure I’ll appreciate that even more tomorrow when I wake up from hibernation.