BE resources are essential
This module was challenging for me because of the many new statistical concepts and the use of R to generate such a tremendous amount of data. First, figuring out what was even going on in all the data was a struggle. I had never worked with this kind of data before, so I had to reread lecture and prelab slides multiple times, look up terms myself and ask lots of questions to really understand what was going on. After figuring out generally what my data meant, the next challenge was how to piece together all of it into a coherent story.
In this module, outside of all the technical scientific skills I learned, I also learned what resources work best for me and how to use them efficiently in my writing process. The following are the resources I used and my thoughts:
Homework assignments - In general, the assignments were good at helping me to structure my paper and getting me to think about the paper early on. For example, the Methods and qPCR figure assignments were great since at that point in the module, I could effectively do a quality job on them and get good feedback. However, for the Introduction assignment, I felt like it was assigned a bit too early, so I didn’t actually know what I was going to write about at the time and ended up rewriting a lot of it anyways after all our experiments were complete, and I had a better idea of how I was going to tell my story.
One-on-one BE Comm lab meetings - I met with a few different fellows for help on different aspects of my paper. Near the beginning of my writing stage, I found it helpful to talk out how I wanted to present all of my data and bounce ideas off with the fellow. It helped me to verbalize my thought process and sparked new ideas. The downside of these meetings though, was that it took a while to explain the goal, experiments and data of the module to the fellows such that they first had a solid understanding of what was going, and then could start to help me. Explaining all this information essentially took up half of the meeting time. At a later stage in my writing process, I met with another fellow to go over my Introduction, which is more general information, so she was able to give me good feedback since it didn’t require as much specific knowledge on the topic. Overall though, I found the BE Comm lab to be helpful.
Office hours - Office hours with the instructors were helpful since I could ask more specific questions. I think having scheduled one-on-one office hours for like 30 min each, rather than an open time, may actually be helpful, since the instructors know exactly what is going on in the Module and I could go over my thoughts and ideas more specifically to get feedback.
-Julia Pei
In this module, outside of all the technical scientific skills I learned, I also learned what resources work best for me and how to use them efficiently in my writing process. The following are the resources I used and my thoughts:
Homework assignments - In general, the assignments were good at helping me to structure my paper and getting me to think about the paper early on. For example, the Methods and qPCR figure assignments were great since at that point in the module, I could effectively do a quality job on them and get good feedback. However, for the Introduction assignment, I felt like it was assigned a bit too early, so I didn’t actually know what I was going to write about at the time and ended up rewriting a lot of it anyways after all our experiments were complete, and I had a better idea of how I was going to tell my story.
One-on-one BE Comm lab meetings - I met with a few different fellows for help on different aspects of my paper. Near the beginning of my writing stage, I found it helpful to talk out how I wanted to present all of my data and bounce ideas off with the fellow. It helped me to verbalize my thought process and sparked new ideas. The downside of these meetings though, was that it took a while to explain the goal, experiments and data of the module to the fellows such that they first had a solid understanding of what was going, and then could start to help me. Explaining all this information essentially took up half of the meeting time. At a later stage in my writing process, I met with another fellow to go over my Introduction, which is more general information, so she was able to give me good feedback since it didn’t require as much specific knowledge on the topic. Overall though, I found the BE Comm lab to be helpful.
Office hours - Office hours with the instructors were helpful since I could ask more specific questions. I think having scheduled one-on-one office hours for like 30 min each, rather than an open time, may actually be helpful, since the instructors know exactly what is going on in the Module and I could go over my thoughts and ideas more specifically to get feedback.
-Julia Pei
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