A satisfying conclusion to a sometimes exhausting semester

The research proposal process was a lot more work and (eventually) a lot more fun than I expected. Picking a topic was one of the hardest parts. At first, in brainstorming ideas and browsing papers, it seemed that any idea we could propose was either 1) trivial, 2) already done, or 3) unreasonable. I realized how much more difficult it is to come up with novel ideas than it is to read and understand the work that someone else has already done. It sometimes feels as if a field is either so saturated that everything has been tried already or so new that there's no clear direction to head. In thinking about the research proposal, I've come to realize how incremental and non-linear scientific progress often is.

After we finally settled on an idea, I really enjoyed diving deeper into the literature. Only after exploring more what experiments have already been performed and models made did I appreciate better the questions that people have asked and are still trying to answer. It was exciting to be able to take ownership of a small piece of the process and to try to combine and build off of the work of other scientists and engineers to solve an important and relevant problem. Even after doing a lot of reading, I felt like there was so much more that I wanted to know before I could design a good experiment. Before exploring our proposal topic deeper, I wouldn't have even understood the right questions to ask or the challenges that our approach might face.

Overall, I really enjoyed the communication assignments in 20.109, despite the enormous amount of time and effort they require. All the time we spent on the proposal, even on exploring ideas we eventually discarded, felt worthwhile. Thank you!