Statistically significant...improvements

3/17/18
On the first day of lab, my lab partner and I left class about half an hour after everyone else. As we walked out at 5:30 on a Friday afternoon, we meekly said bye to Josephine, tired after a long day and embarrassed by our slowness.
Both of us had done or are currently working in a UROP, so we were confident coming in that we would be at least decently prepared to do the wet lab work for 20.109. But on the first lab day when we got to the section about calculating volumes for our plasmid confirmation digest, we were so lost. We got confused on the concentrations and how to scale up the volumes to actually be able to pipette out enough liquid. Struggling multiple times, we ended up asking Josephine for help. After finally getting our calculations down, most people were already half way done with the entire lab.
Looking back, the calculations were pretty simple, just using the C1V1 = C2V2 equation. However, we had never had to do many calculations by ourselves in our UROPs before. Our mentors would just give us the volumes, and we would do the pipetting and mixing. I realized how much I still had to learn in order to become a real, independent researcher.
While being able to do calculations is certainly a part of it, I also realized how much I had to learn in other areas such as the writing and understanding of science. For example, the research article that we had to read was a challenge for me. I didn’t know a lot of the terms and had to look them up. While looking up a term, I would find another term in the explanation that I didn’t know and then have to look that up as well. Although the process was difficult, I learned so much. With the Journal Club presentations coming up, I know I’ll be learning so much more about some amazing recent scientific discoveries.
Although my lab partner and I are still not the fastest in lab, or even close by that means, we have already come a long ways. We’ve gotten the hang of most calculations and have learned to be more efficient in dividing up tasks. Now instead of leaving lab 30 minutes after everyone, it’s more like 10, which is one of the few things in lab that has come out to be a statistically significant difference so far. I am looking forward to the next two modules and learning so much more about different lab techniques and how they are being used to progress cutting edge research, as well as how to effectively present my work to the rest of the scientific community.


-Julia Pei

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