BE 20.109(F19) Class blog

I used to get quite nervous whenever I had to deliver a presentation to a room of people. I could feel butterflies in my stomach from the moment I got up to speak until the moment I finished my presentation. However, I think for this task (public speaking) in particular, having to do it over and over and especially seeing other scientists I admire give talks has really been the crucial factor in helping me control what I'll playfully refer to as PTSD ("presentation" traumatic stress disorder) in this blog! For Journal Club specifically, I was able to prepare my slides and get great feedback from a BE Comm Lab fellow the day before I had to present. I got really useful advice that helped me to tighten up my slides (I had way too many), improve figure titles, condense slides for impact, and clarify explanations that needed to be delivered more effectively. Thinking back to all the presentations I have had to give for classes pre- and post-MIT, I truly think that each pres...

I enjoyed 20.109 journal club more than I expected, both in presenting my own paper and in seeing classmates' presentations. I've participated in a few journal clubs before in my lab, but the presentations from 20.109 as a whole seemed more coherent and engaging. In the past when I've presented for journal club, I've usually found myself copying figures from the paper into a slideshow and simply talking through all the figures. The result has usually been a lengthy presentation of data that might give listeners a good understanding of the content of the paper, but forces listeners to distill a takeaway for themselves. In approaching the 20.109 journal club presentation, the strict 10 minute time limit forced me to be more intentional about deciding on a main message for the presentation and adhering strictly to that message, even if that message was slightly different from the paper's overall message. Limiting the scope of the presentation made it much more concis...

I just finished giving my Journal Club presentation for Module 2 yesterday - it was definitely a worthwhile experience from which I learned a lot. The paper that I chose was really dense with lots of figures and a huge supplement, so it was challenging to figure out a way to pick the most intriguing data to show within the span of 10 minutes. After reading the paper the first time, I went back through it and noted down which figures really caught my attention, and which ones I thought would be important for telling a cohesive story. I then made slides out of all of these figures, but when I tried to practice presenting for the first time, it took almost 30 minutes to get through all the material I had prepared... I then went back through the slides and tried to trim them down to a few key experiments that really made up the crux of the paper. This was definitely one of the most difficult parts, as explaining other people's experiments took much more time and thought than I had i...

When going through the syllabus, I was most worried about this journal club presentation. Since MIT, I haven't really given any presentations, let alone presenting on a scientific paper in front of my peers and the instructors who know a lot more about the field than I do. When going through the paper that I chose, I found it very complex. I struggled the most with keeping track of how much time the presentation would take. It took me 20 minutes the first time I tried presenting it. This freaked me out because I was only presenting half of the figures on the paper. I wasn't going to shorten the content anymore, but I needed to make my explanation more concise. I practiced more and recorded myself so that I can see what could be improved.  Although this was very painful (I hate listening to myself), this turned out to be really helpful! I realized that I was just saying the same thing over and over again, and continuously paused during my presentations. After practicing on Mo...

Throughout my time at MIT so far, I have extensively developed my brain in terms of science and math skills.  I have come to learn and understand things that I never would have thought I could handle.  However, I have lost a lot of skills that I used to possess.  When I was in middle and high school, I used to love to read and write, for example.  Now I dread writing for my HASS classes because I am so out of practice.  More related to this assignment, I am also out of practice with my presentation skills.  In high school, I used to have to give presentations in many of my classes, and I got to the point where I no longer had much stage fright.  At MIT, on the other hand, I have only given one other presentation besides the Journal Club presentation, and it was in a HASS class. Therefore, I was quite scared to stand in front of my classmates, teachers, and a video camera to discuss a complicated research paper.  I spent many hours trying to ful...

I am always dreading whenever I have to do public speaking. Time moves faster when I try to speak below the time limit, and it moves slower if I don’t have time limit at all.  This journal club is my second time presenting scientific data. The first time I did it was for my UROP meeting where the presentation lasted around 40 mins including Q&A sessions here and there in the middle. Having said that, I thought that this one’s going to be less challenging. But I was wrong. Time is not the issue here.  In public speaking, my biggest fear is to lose my trains of thoughts. Therefore, what I try to do is to write a script and memorize what I want to say. Sometimes I feel bad doing this because I don’t want the presentation to sound unnatural. But I just learned that even the top CEOs and the TED speakers do that, including Winston Churchill who was known for being a great orator. He wrote his speech and crafted it so perfectly, knowing where to pause and where to...

SOoo... Journal Club presentations have finally ended and a time of "rest" has come. I'm not really sure how to make this a deep, enlightening post so I'm just going state what happened (in a clear and concise way) and hope that the meaning comes out on its own. Inconclusive Data on the Effect of Practice on Stress Reduction and Journal Club Presentation Time  Introduction Every biological engineer at MIT is required to take 20.109. Students are required to complete six major communication assignments, three of which are verbal assignments. It's of particular importance that one understand the process of developing a Journal Club presentation to prevent the pain and failure of future 109ers. Methods Journal Club Prepared Using Blood Sweat and Tears The paper "CRISPR-Cas9-based mutagenesis frequently provokes on-target mRNA misregulation" (WHATSTHIS) was analyzed using my brain to procure meaningful figures that would later be pre...

Conquering stage fright. This  prompt was correct, this was my first time formally presenting research published by someone else but even more, it was probably my first time in college presenting in a course 20 class! I've only been doing HASS presentations since I have been at MIT. The most surprising part about preparing this presentation must have been that I could pick and choose what figures I presented and that had a huge impact on the presentation. I omitted some things from my journal club article that would not have really helped my explanation. Not only would they not have helped, but I also realized that the researchers were making some... interesting choices (they did some experiments on one buffer and then optimized it just to use another and it was weird). There were also a lot of supplemental figures of which some were totally useless and others were way better than the ones they actually used as figures in the paper.  Of course the thing...

I went through a whirlwind of emotions before, during, and after the Journal Club Presentation. In the days leading up to the presentation, I was in full panic mode. I had not started early enough and was so confused what was even going on in the paper. It seemed like I could not absorb the material no matter how many times I would read the same paragraph. Thankfully, office hours were a saver. In preparing the slides, I realized that editing figures took much longer than expected. Not only did they have to effectively contribute to the scientifically story, they also had to be easy to follow. I thought the presenting would be the easy part. After all, I’m a tour guide so I thought I would nail the public speaking part. However, graded public speaking was a new monster for me. While speaking, I often was searching for the next words and said “ummm” half a billion times. Internally, I was screaming and the 10 minutes felt like forever. However, the experience was such a great...

At first, I was super concerned about the journal club assignment-- it was 15% of the course grade, and it was like ten minutes!!! What if I forgot everything, or if powerpoint deleted my slides the night before, or I completely misunderstood the paper? However, since I was worried, I decided to start really early. I read the paper during downtime in lab, and starting working on the slides as soon as I could. After about a week of tuning the slides and what I planned to say, I felt prepared. I asked a friend to function as an audience, and practiced twice, realizing that I needed to add more visual cues to the powerpoint-- it was really confusing on a busy slide what I was talking about. After this round of practice, I further refined my slides. I was able to fit another practice on Monday night with Fidelia and Athena, which really helped as well. In general, I never remember how presentations actually end up going because I get too focused on not talking too fast or clicking the wron...

Module 1 has been a whirlwind for sure. Time seems to have flown by since the beginning of the semester. The workload in 109 is definitely non-negligible, but it feels like a valuable investment as we are getting to actually learn and practice modern research techniques. Just earlier today I was testing my mini presentation on my sister who had come up from Florida to visit. She was shocked to hear that I was getting to do "real" science. I feel like 109 is really preparing me for life after MIT. By actually learning and practicing modern techniques I am growing more confident in my ability to be a "real" scientist - be that in grad school or industry. In addition to gaining technical skills, I feel like I am gaining very practical experience in scientific communication. I had been particularly dreading taking 109 because I don't particularly enjoy writing or practicing "soft skills" like communication in general. I have grown in appreciation for the ...

Best Preparation for Graduate School EVER This class directly relates to my future graduate project and I am learning so much... So I know I need a lab class to graduate, and this counts towards a major requirement in biology. However, the biggest motivation for me to take MIT classes in general - the MOST IMPORTANT reason - is the amazing potential to learn from so many amazing scientists who are passionate about teaching. I have taken other lab classes at MIT, but none of them have done as thorough a job at forcing me to understand the anatomy of a scientific report, making me communicate my science in virtually every different format, and developing my teamwork skills as much as in this class. There is so much support that, even though each week brings with it a million more due dates, I believe there is no reason why I should miss out on anything that is going on. What is even better is that all the tools that I need to have mastered for graduate school - ImageJ, MATLAB, especi...

October 4th - 10 Days Before the Data Summary Deadline: Figure 1: A very well intentioned and prepared 20.109 student plans to start and finish the Data Summary early.  As my lab partner and I began planning for the Data Summary, we knew it was going to be a lot to take on. I would be out of town the weekend it was due and we had exams to study for the week after. We had both never written a scientific paper before and were completely unprepared for what was to come. So we planned. We would meet every day for an hour and try to chip away at the assignment little by little, eventually freeing up our weekend.  Good intentions.  October 14th - The Day of the Data Summary Deadline: Figure 2: A very frantic and sleep deprived 20.109 student octodecuple texts her lab partner at very early hours on the day of the deadline.  As evident by Figure 2, we can conclude that the plan was not followed through on. The week leading up to the deadline end...

Monday October 14th. Setting: McCormick Hall. Time: 9:59 PM. They really be out here.  Dear Diary, Even though we were warned from the very beginning that this was coming. Even though we've had assignments preparing us for this assignment. Even though past 109ers warned us that procrastination is a no no for this class, it's hard to break old habits. After spending Friday night staring at a blank Google Slides and a couple of figures, I called it a day and hoped I could find guidance and enlightenment from Becky, Leslie, and Noreen the next day during office hours. I told myself I was gonna wake up @ 8:00 AM so I had something tangible to bring to office hours. Obviously, I overslept, scrambled for my backpack, and ran to office hours @ 10:03 AM. I opened my laptop and continued to stare at a blank screen. To break this cycle of nothingness, I relied on my best skill: word vomit (I have to get something on the page at some point). After 8 hours of office hour...

The day the Data Summary was due I went to Darwin's to work with a friend. From 10 am to 3pm I maybe wrote a total of four bullets. I was so frustrated at how little progress I had made. I had a headache. I missed my family. And I was at a loss for words:, and not in a romantic "I have found my one true love" kind of way. I tried to call my family for moral support and no one was available so I took the next logical step: I cried in my friend's arms. This all sounds irrelevant... and sad... but don't worry, I will have gone somewhere with this by the end of this blog. Writing the Data Summary was mentally, physically, and emotionally difficult for me. I had never really written any kind of scientific writing, and I had been unable to write any of the build-up assignments without a lot of instructor support. How could I write anything of substance when my brain was clogged with snot when, even on a normal day, I needed so much help? By Monday the only thing push...

I have enjoyed learning everything in Mod 1, especially the public health aspects of our research. It was exciting that we had a real research question and actually tried to find the answer rather than purely learning wet lab techniques! This was a huge surprise, as I came in thinking we would just repeat some boring experiments that people have done before. I was very excited going into lab. I was shocked, however, by how small our section was. I was even more surprised when I was told that the first data summary was going to be done with my partners. My past experiences of working in a team were horrible. Everyone was behind, and I always ended up having to clean up the mess. However, working with my group in 20.109 totally changed my opinion! From working together in lab to writing the data summary, my partners really have helped me learn. Reflecting back, I think that the data summary assignment would have been so much more difficult if I had to do it alone. As none of ...

After seeing how 20.109 is run, it was nice that we have lecture for an hour each time before lab because this allowed me to gain a very clear understanding of what was actually happening in our experiments. Although I had the  necessary information, one thing that was hard for me was sorting through all the information that we had been given to find specifics since sometimes we went over a topic many times in different ways (which was very helpful) but then it was hard to find those specific notes from that one time we talked about a topic. One way I might be able to combat this is to learn to better navigate the wiki so I can find information easier.  Another note is that I ended up really liking Benchling for lab notebook entries and Prism to do the data analysis and graphs rather than Excel. Although I ended up with many many graphs, they all looked pretty professional and were easy to manipulate with 95% confidence intervals too.  Alt...