Ad Meliora

I think this semester is one that is always going to be singularly, hopefully at least, unique. I certainly hope that I will look back one day from the far far future and realize how interesting I am and we are to have lived through a piece of history that will undoubtedly show up in a book. As I am writing this, almost everything has wrapped up for the semester and I'm still taken aback by how different everything is currently to what I had imagined. For someone who likes to stringently roadmap and plan things, pandemics are somewhat troublesome, mildly speaking of course. It's not exactly like I could've went back to January 2020 me and told myself to just set aside a few months period(as of now) wherein the world will turn upside down. So yes, we are no longer on campus, we truly have become Zoomers, my Brass Rat came by mail, and I haven't had a normal interaction with people outside of my family in about two months -- the order and importance of these events are up for interpretation.

So back to 20.109, the virtual portion did suffice to serve as a suitable substitute to what would've been a very hands-on lab class. For that, I have to really thank the instructors for trying their best to salvage the situation and make the best with a virtual format. I can honestly say that I felt like this class was very worthwhile to my growth as a scientific writer and it is among the few classes where I couldn't rely on regurgitating knowledge to pass. Although I'll moan and gripe about the assignments I lost countless hours of sleep to, having come out the other side, I can definitively say that my skills have improved. I no longer agonize over wording and figures as I once did back in the data summary for Module 1. Although there's still a long way to go before any publication, I can at the very least say I am slightly less newb as I was before.

So as I try to wrap my head around whatever this semester was, the good and bad, the ups and down, I think it's equally important to look ahead to when we'll get to reunite once more in person and have our overdue lunch :P. So as the Latin phrase of this entry's title(trying to dust off my Latin skills) declares, onwards to better things!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Message from the Peak of Everest

Hello world. As I stand here about twenty feet from the summit, a sense of accomplishment washes over me. It's an undertaking few have conquered. Still, at the same time I feel a sense of dread. I made it here, but what about the trip on the way down? Supplies are lower than expected, the crew is tired, and the nights have been getting longer and longer. There's a small chance we might not even have enough oxygen for the next two days, I haven't had the chance to do the math. Why are we even up here? What hubris drove us to try to conquer this majesty of nature? What were we looking for? Looking out across the broken and jagged Himalayas, I feel contemplative. It's about 6:34 am, and the darkness is starting to lift. Wind is strong, but no snowfall. We dug ourselves a little crevasse to shield ourselves from the wind, and we're on the east side of the mountain. 2 more minutes till sunrise. It was a difficult trip up. It was lonely and sad and cold and
Read more

Zooming in on Journal Club

This journal club has easily been the most unique one I’ve done. Some things still stayed the same, like having to identify key components to form cogent story. It was an interesting challenge to excavate the main data of my paper and pare unnecessary details and figures. I could feel the pressure of the 10-minute time limit as I tried to strike a proper balance of details to enhance the figures’ main story without overwhelming my audience. An unexpected challenge, however, was to get around the sheer awkwardness I felt when catching a glimpse of myself presenting in the corner of my screen. I always have had a nonzero amount of presentation anxiety, but I didn’t expect the same feelings to resurface when talking to a computer screen instead of a live audience. I also found that became more attuned to specific words and phrases than I would in a live presentation. Consequently, I found myself restarting my recordings over small details that I normally wouldn’t pay attention to.
Read more

Reflections on 20.109

Today was the last lecture of 20.109, and as I signed off the Zoom call, I felt a little flutter of sadness. 20.109 presented a unique dynamic that I'd never had in a class before. I'd never had to spend 5 hours a day in class for a single course, or had to present my own novel ideas and be subjected to the interrogations of my classmates or instructors, or write my own research article draft. I learned a bunch of new skills in 20.109, but the following were the ones that will stick with me the most. 1. Schematics - I learned to LOVE making schematics. So much so, in fact, that I am strongly considering buying a BioRender subscription, which is something I usually avoid at all costs. There's something so satisfying about generating your own schematics for presentations and controlling every aspect of the story the image tells. I love coordinating the colors and paring the experimental details down to what is absolutely necessary to tell the story. 2. Effective prese
Read more