The Research Proposal

The research proposal required a lot more work than I thought it was going to. I think the big difference in my experience when compared with other people’s experience is that I was part of a 3 person team. Although this meant we each could speak for less during the actual presentation, this also meant 3 different working styles and 3 different schedules to find time to work on this together. Despite these challenges, I think we did a relatively good job on this project.

It turned out that Kristina and Will had found similar papers on DNA electronics, and after talking about it, we all agreed that this was probably the coolest paper out of all the papers we found. However, this topic was definitely out of the scope of bioengineering any of us had done. We had to read so many papers to actually figure out what we wanted to test and actually understand what was being done in this field.

Finding a time to meet was probably the hardest problem. Working together during the day was pretty much out of the question as we all had classes to attend. Finding a time during the evening to meet up didn't work as we all had extracurriculars that pretty much ended at 7 or 8. Thus, we pretty much only met up at night. We saw each other on a daily basis to work on this. The day before the presentation we went to a class on campus to practice using an actual projector. With the last minute alterations to the slides and constructive criticism of each other’s parts, we were there on campus from 10-2:30 at night. Our hard work paid off though after we presented. For myself, my fear of public speaking went down—which I measure by the amount my hand was shaking. (It definitely shook a lot less than my journal club presentation as when I used the laser pointer it didn't go all over the place.) Working with this many people on a project definitely emphasized the importance of collaboration and teamwork, something I will take with me in the future years.

Also…Team Platinum forever!