A Joyful Proposition

  The research proposal presentation presented an interesting hurdle to overcome. First off, there was the joy of giving another presentation. I tend to talk a lot with friends and 1 on 1, so one may rightly assume that I would be decent at presentation-giving but, well, no. So there was that. The second hurdle came with making this presentation 109-esque. Fortunately, this was not actually much of a hurdle as, while I would not have known what that meant at the beginning of the semester, by this point I feel like I understand what 109 and biological engineering entail. Finally, there was the difficulty of partner work. To be clear, that’s not to say my partner was anything but great, rather to say that I work very sporadically, and so it’s difficult for me to just set out a time and get large amounts of work done, which is kind of the MO of group work. 

The first hurdle was really quite standard by now, so my partner and I just made sure to run through the presentation a few times so we could get an idea of the pacing as well as calm nerves a tad. As I mentioned above, coming up with a 109-esque topic would have proven very difficult earlier in the semester, but by this point it wasn’t unreasonable. Especially good in that regard was that this was a partner project, which allowed us to bounce ideas off of one another to come up with ideas and develop our proposal. On the last point, that just required me to work on gathering my thoughts and maintaining trains of thought rather than bouncing around erratically. It’s not a perfect science, but that supplemented with some outside work so I didn’t unfairly put work on my partner and I feel like it all worked out. Particularly interesting in all of this was the underlying idea that, not only are you presenting a research topic to someone, you are also trying to convince them of its importance. In that regard, I’m not sure how well I did. I've long since forgotten the ethos, pathos, and logos appeals one is supposed to use in persuasion, so one can only wonder how persuasive I could have been. I suppose only time, and the rubric, will tell. Either way, it at least made me more aware of something I will almost certainly have to do in the future, so that I’m not unprepared when it comes around. Regardless, it’s been a great semester, and I hope everyone in the class as well as the 109-teaching staff have a great and safe winter break!

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