Benefits of the Research Proposal

So presenting (round 2) went a lot better for me than round one, and I attest the most of that to the most awesome lab partner I could have ever asked for this semester, Jess! But actually, something I have definitely learned this semester is how wonderful it is to work on a team, and how much more enjoyable things can be when working with others. I'm sure that many of the other students in 109 this semester who haven't done much group work can agree that this class and especially our final research proposal project showed a lot about how beneficial team work is.

Another thing I learned from this project, was how much I enjoy designing experiments, I think its so cool going through each thing that needs to be done as well as trouble shooting each step along the way. Can that be my job automatically out of college.....just kidding, I know thats unrealistic since you have to first prove you have the credentials to do something like that, but maybe someday!

I think this project also really shows how creative we are. If someone would have told me a year ago that I was planning an experiment from scratch just based off of papers I read as well as knowledge I had I would have been like okay, is it an experiment on the best number to set your toaster to to get the ideal toast? Clearly I had high standards for my experimental capabilities. But really, watching everyones presentations were so cool, especially thinking that we started out with no direct guideline or topic to focus on and its really cool to see how each team formed their ideas and what sorts of things everyone came up with.

**Shannon and Noreen: this was possibly one of my favorite parts of this class**