Module 2 Report Reflection

After feeling rather rushed while writing the majority of my Module 1 report, I told myself that I would start writing earlier next time. So, when K Whang (Katherine) invited me to join her super organized life schedule for completing psets/studying for tests/writing the report, I thought I would join. Sadly, I think it only took me a day to fall off the schedule as I spent too much time studying for 20.310...but whatever, my report ended up getting written. Sadly I missed most of CPW and Marathon Monday, but I <3 Course 20. On the bright side of things, I am very happy that the majority of the methods section and a few figures were assigned as homework, because that made the assignment bearable.

I thought that the act of writing the last report made writing this report a little bit easier. However, I found new struggles with writing the Module 2 report that I didn't experience while writing the Module 1 report. I found it difficult to write a hypothesis that encompassed what I wanted to say. Because the topology experiments and the inhibitor study were kind of separate/kind of not, I struggled at first trying to figure out what "my story" was that I wanted to tell. Also, I struggled a lot more interpreting the data for Module 2. In Module 1, any difficulties I had were because I didn't understand the software or the statistical tests...But for Module 2, I understood what we were supposed to do, but the data that Joseph and I got was just very poor/inconclusive. I realize that science fails a lot, but the fact that our inhibitor seemed to display the effects of a promoter was a bit concerning. I found it very difficult writing such an important assignment on data that seemed like it should be torn up and thrown away. In the end though, I think I was able to draw a few solid conclusions from the results, so that is good :)

Even though I didn't realize it was raining on Marathon Monday until I submitted my report on stellar (I was sitting at my computer in a room with no windows until 5pm), I guess I am a little glad that we had the three day weekend to complete the assignment. Maybe in time I will become super fast and efficient at writing lab reports, but currently I work at the speed of a turtle. Maybe slow and steady wins the race.