Negative Results Followed By More Negative Results (but hopefully positive 109ers)


            I think my experience with Mod1 was similar to a lot of other 109ers. A lot of the experiments and procedures didn’t work…
The information we learned in lecture was all very exciting and promising. I was very excited about FKBP12 and its potential. And we were selecting ligands that had been screened by another class so I thought we would definitely see some interesting results. But of course biology is messy and we only get one try so a lot of things did not turn out the way I envisioned but I certainly still learned a lot along the way.


So we didn’t see anything significant in our data but I learned so much about presenting data and communicating as a scientist (I guess that’s what this course is for or something). I’ve worked at a UROP since freshman year and one of the best parts about 109 is that you always know what is going on. A lot of the time when I’m working at my UROP, I don’t want to ask questions about something I’ve already done or clarify things when they’ve already been explained. So it was really cool to clarify and have a lot of knowledge about the techniques we were learning.
Something that was frustrating for me was not getting to repeat things. I know that there was more success than in other years in purifying FKBP12 but I don’t think my group had any active protein so I would’ve wanted to tweak things as well as change things in the secondary assays. Because we don’t really know what we would have found if everything had gone smoothly.
But even with only one set of data, it was also frustrating analyzing it multiple ways or doing the wrong analysis and having to redo it. I tend to like to plan out what I’m going to do and do it once, but obviously that’s not realistic with data analysis. But going over things and being meticulous is something I really have to work at. That being said I learned a lot about how to do it and organize data and analysis efficiently (so that if you were right, but thought you were wrong you don’t have to redo it @andrea L)

  
I also am someone that can be very repetitive in my writing especially if I am trying to explain something technical. I definitely get my point across clearly, but it’s usually not in the most efficient way possible. So even after the data summary was done, it was a major struggle to get the mini presentation under three minutes. Andrea and I were sitting in the conference room for HOURS trying to cut ours down. But it really taught us a lot about what is necessary to get your point across and that more information isn’t necessarily better.



Overall, I am really enjoying 109. I am learning so much more than I expected to and have really enjoyed the lectures as well as working with the teaching staff you guys are the best!

Shout out to Andrea my lab partner idk what I would do without you <3


-Izumi de los Rios Kobara


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