20.109 From My Kitchen

How is it possible to do a lab class online? I can’t exactly do cell culture in my kitchen thousands of miles away from MIT. The 20.109 staff struggled with this question too, and eventually gave in to the inevitable – we’d just have to use preliminary data and focus on the other aspects of the course.

Communication and analysis of data are definitely one of the most important parts of 20.109, though I’d consider the wet lab portion to be the most fun. Because of the switch to fully online classes, I now have the opportunity to focus fully on an aspect of science that I didn’t have any previous experience with – scientific writing. 

The data summary was definitely a challenge for me. I could comprehend what each section needed to do individually, but putting together an entire paper that made sense both in its parts and as a whole took a lot of work. The style of being repetitive and extremely matter of fact was very different than all other types of writing I have done before in college and high school. However, the comments on homework and my first draft of the data summary was very helpful in trying to improve. 

So instead of doing wet lab work in the 20.109 teaching laboratory and at my UROP, I’ve been keeping my hands busy baking bread (like everyone else stuck at home), creating baguettes, soft pretzels, loaves, banana muffins, and cinnamon raisin bread. Hopefully it’ll tide me over until I can return to the lab bench in a few months.


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