Struggles and Fascination in 20.109


So far, 20.109 has been challenging, but interesting.

Being a communication-intensive class, 20.109 definitely involves a lot of scientific writing and figure-making, which has been a lot more challenging than I expected. However, the instructors provide a lot of guidance and constructive feedback, and are ever patient with answering all my questions! That really helps, and I definitely feel like I’ve learned a lot.

I’ve really enjoyed learning about and doing experiments with everyone during lab sections. In Module 1, it was very cool to see the experimental techniques we were learning about in 7.05 being put into action at the same time in 20.109. Now that we’re in Module 2, it’s fascinating to finally catch a glimpse of how RNAseq actually works after having heard the term mentioned many times but never really knowing how it’s done till now. It’s also really interesting to see how some of the things we learned about RT-PCR are actually applicable to some of the testing methods for COVID-19. However, I’m struggling a lot with R. It takes such a long time for me to do the exercises, and it’s difficult for me to really understand what we’re doing. I understand that R is the language of choice for RNAseq analysis, so it is very fitting that we use in this module. However, I can’t help but feel very unprepared. I think some prior preparation to build a bit of familiarity with R would have been helpful.

Despite struggling with scientific writing and using R, I feel like I’ve learned a lot from 20.109 so far, and that what we’re learning is very applicable to UROPs, understanding current research, etc.!

~Camellia

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