"It's magic!" "...Nothing happened"

The funny story behind my CRISPR experience is that I was a TA for a genetic engineering course for a week during the summer, and the high school students I was observing performed a CRISPR project in the 7.02 lab. They made fluorescent E. coli which was really exciting, and I might have taught them some biology, but really I did nothing at all!

  Mod2 was going to be my chance to actually figure out was was going on with CRISPR and have some success myself (all of my "students" got their E. coli glowing). We had informative lectures on how CRISPR and CRISPRi functioned and navigated through at least one dense explanation of application with the journal club, so I was ready to make all the lactate! ..which didn't happen.

Post-data analysis, I was a little disappointed, even though I knew that sometimes engineering just doesn't respond superbly to enthusiasm...

For that reason, I think what I mostly took away from Mod2 was different types of communication for experiments. Creating a narrative for discussing research is a struggle, and between the journal club and individual journal-style report (not to mention the distraction of 20.320), I was a prepared to ride the struggle bus to Mod 3. I survived, but not without some notable struggling moments including forgetting to start the timer during journal club, attempting to find significance in the data, and considering how to proceed from the sure(?) failure of my gRNA. 

However, I still feel really great about Mod2 thanks to all the teaching staff! I appreciated all the feedback we were given throughout the module and the reassurance that experiments fail, and I know that I can fix things the next time around, including, but not limited to:

• Not starting the timer for a timed presentation
• Not practicing journal club presentation until it bled into my dreams
• Not going to the BE Comm lab every week (although I did use the CommKit and that was great!)

I kind of hope I never have to listen/watch myself present ever again (it's inevitable), but there are some things that I was able to accomplish and be proud of, so even if my CRISPRi system didn't work, it's not that bad.