109 is over already?


Wow. We made it. 20.109 is coming to an end. I can't believe it's actually over (except the mini-report of course). To be honest, this has been my favorite class this semester. Needless to say, it was a lot of work and took a lot of time, but I really did learn a lot in the end. I feel like now I truly know what it means to be course 20, and when my family asks me what biological engineering even means, I can show them an LED powered by a battery made from bacteriophage!

This last module especially gave me a good idea of what life as a course 20 will be like. Since I hope to pursue a PhD after undergrad, having to come up with a research proposal and plan the whole project introduced me to what life as a grad student might be like. Luckily, I enjoyed learning about research that has been done in the past and brainstorming ways to utilize their discoveries for something new. I actually got really excited reading a lot of the papers just because I found their research so cool, and it's crazy to think that one day, we'll be doing novel research and writing papers for real.

As this class went on, in addition to learning more about bioengineering, I learned more about how to survive and/or thrive in this class. Here are some suggestions I would give to future 109-ers:

  1. Start things early! You cannot write a research paper in one night. Or two. Or even three. There are some classes where you can procrastinate and still survive, and this is not one of them.
  2. Office hours! I am ashamed to admit that the first time I went to Josephine's office hours was the last time she held them. The instructors are really there to help you in whatever way possible (shoutout to Josephine for getting us access to a paper that was crucial to our research proposal!).
  3. The Comm Lab!(especially after having something done). Sure, the Comm Lab can be helpful with brainstorming and outlining, but I also found it very helpful to go to the comm lab with something already written, or slides already made, to get really great feedback.
  4. Don't forget about lab quizzes! Not gonna lie, I have many regrets about my lab quizzes. It's extremely easy to forget about those…
  5. Have fun! Sometimes it's hard to really understand why we're doing what we're doing, and you just get caught up in following protocols, but you do a lot of cool things!

I also want to give one last shout out to the best lab partner ever!



Special thanks to Angela Belcher for being the coolest person ever, and to Josephine, Noreen, and Leslie for being such angels and dealing with all of our struggles :)

-Cydney

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