Research Article Reflections

It was such a relief to finally turn in my research article. I have to say that I have so much respect for my UROP supervisor that is publishing a research paper. After struggling to read countless for UROP and journal club, writing one myself was not any easier. I do not have much experience with writing research papers, but I imagined that experience reading them and the data summary would make the experience easier. However, I soon discovered how difficult it was to put together a cohesive story with all of our data and be able to understand everything well enough to write so much about it.

Maybe I was hindered by my overall lack of understanding of the purpose or the module itself, but I also found it difficult to grasp the main point and goal of this module with everything that went on. I initially thought the genes of interest were the main points, but then changed it to the general RNAseq findings and GO analysis. After more thought, I then changed it to comparing two cell lines through RNAseq. My title even changed 4-5 times before I just gave up and settled on something that might not even be the main point at all. At some points, I had so many questions and was so confused that I did not even know how to formulate my thoughts to express my confusion and ask questions. Maybe I would have found it easier if it was my own research and I had a solid understanding of the goal and every experiment that I chose to study with, but I do not think I had enough knowledge to confidently write this research article. I do not blame anyone but myself for that, and I hope that next time I can improve my understanding of the science and data interpretation to write something much better.

It was also difficult to interpret everything and confidently gain all the knowledge necessary to write this paper well with so little time between the journal club presentations and the research article. Of course, this is because of the pandemic situation that made the presentations pushed back, but writing this article did take a lot longer than expected. I think I would have benefitted from more time to go over everything and maybe ask more questions, but those are all things that I will take with me next time I write a paper.

Although writing this research article was a huge struggle as a whole, I am glad I had this opportunity. I learned a lot from struggling and have gained a more profound appreciation for the paper I read. This experience definitely gave me a whole new perspective on research papers that I would never have gained by simply reading them. Now, I hope that I can take this new knowledge and experience into the future and become an even better scientific communicator and writer.

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