Bioengineering presented by 20.109

We're almost done! This semester has been quite a rollercoaster, but I've learned a lot. I really enjoyed the class and it gave me more perspective on what Course 20 is actually all about. Albeit we were warned at the beginning of the semester, I was still shocked at the amount of writing, we have had to do. They were all very good learning experience to have before we go off into the world and write real papers or pitch our billion dollar idea about malaria drug delivery. This class had a lot of life lessons to teach me, when it came to failed experiments and cool machines. Who knew one could struggle so much with pipetting, lab math, and general functionality in lab.

With the research proposal, I realized that I like coming up with experiments and projects, however, I still don't know if I want to conduct the experiments. Graduate school is now more on my radar as a result or sell out to consulting... I really admire people who can come with novel ideas aka Professor Angela Belcher, because it was really hard to be inventive when we didn't know anything in depth enough to come up with something completely knew. It was encouraging to think that our idea could actually work, maybe we should put a patent on it or we're just getting ahead of ourselves. Our research proposal, I am ashamed to admit, came to us at 2AM the day we were suppose to come up with a preliminary idea.

I really enjoyed learning more about the realm of biological engineering outside of diseases and drugs with Module 3. I sometimes forget that there is more to BE than medicine and cells. The machines and equipment that we used for this module were a lot more exciting than the past modules. The TEM machine was a work of art. And we got to take home our results instead of throwing them away in biowaste.... Actually being able to take home something tangible makes bioengineering a lot less conceptual and more practical.

Lastly, I want to thank everyone for helping us through this journey. Professor Koehler for getting us kinda obsessed with small molecules. Professor Frankel for teaching us about big data analysis. Amanda for dealing with my inability to download R packages. Professor Belcher for making everything she talked about really cool and interesting. Jifa and everyone in the Belcher lab for making all of our batteries. Josephine for dealing with my many walk of shames to the instructor bench. Leslie for imparting realistic life and career advice. Noreen for always being there to help us with the countless office hours. Caspar for finding amusement in our antics. And Cydney for being a gr9 lab partner! #labpartnersneverseparate. Thanks for a great semester!

Sincerely,
Cathy
The struggle bus








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