Take-aways from 20.109

    I can't lie and say this class didn't stress me out. A LOT. I spent more time working on homework and trying to understand the material in this class than I've probably ever spent on any subject. However, personally, I feel like I'll be taking a lot out of this class, especially the communication component. It takes more than one time presenting or writing out research articles and proposals to internalize the expectations and skills necessary for scientific writing. While I did bemoan the amount of homework we had assigned in addition to our labs, one thing it did give me is the practice to form my own intuition. I can positively say that I will never struggle as much to do a research presentation as I did in this class again, because I learned so many best practices for making presentations and communicating effectively. 

    Making the presentation for the research proposal went so much more smoothly than the journal club presentation because I already had an idea of what effective slides look like. The figures that I needed to make because I knew what helpful figures looked like. If anything, the research proposal gave me some confidence in my presenting abilities and scientific abilities, because the presentation taught me that with enough preparation, I am fully capable of performing effective scientific presentations. 

    Not to mention my skills with reading scientific papers have increased exponentially and the time to read them had dropped in a similar fashion. Knowing where to find the most important aspects of a paper helps in both learning from prior literature and writing effective articles to share my work with the scientific community. Thank you instructing staff! Thank you Comm Lab!


~Gabi

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