A poignant end

I think our class is of the unanimous opinion that this is the best course we have taken at MIT by far. I can only imagine how sick the 109 teaching staff must be of hearing this but it’s SO true. Things we did in this class were genuinely engaging, meaning it was never a chore to come to class. What Bevin said at the beginning of class was so true. After taking this class, I can at least somewhat eloquently describe to someone what bioengineering is. 

In 20.109, we learned how to physically do wet lab experiments, troubleshoot, write in a scientific context, present our findings, and analyze data, just to name a few things. Perhaps the most valuable experience for me, though, was the research proposal, which very appropriately was sort of the culmination of our assignments. It forced us to take into consideration things we’ve learned in this class, at our UROPs, and pretty much everywhere in between. It gave us a glimpse into what it’s like to plan a full-fledged research plan and how much thought and work goes into coming up with something new to study. It was difficult to sift through the pages and pages of Pubmed search results and many of our initial ideas were dismissed or modified on grounds of unoriginality, incoherence, difficulty or the simple fact that someone had already done something similar. 

By the time our idea was crystallized, I was already feeling great about how far we’d gotten only to be hit by a brand new set of roadblocks. We had to go through a second round of literature searches to figure out our methodology, mapping out exact experiments (and their reliability), a feasible mouse model, reasons for choosing certain approaches, and data to back it all up. This was a lot to handle but working with my partners and having those extra chunks of time in class made all the difference in allowing us to finish and feel satisfied with what we did. 

Upon completing that proposal and the associated presentation, I experienced this feeling of relief and pride like no other. It felt amazing to be done but I couldn’t stop thinking of our proposal and the process. I never thought I’d say this while I was doing the grueling work on the proposal, but I think this assignment may actually have primed me to look forward to doing something similar in the future. 

And with that, I would like to extend a sincere and deep thank you to everyone in 20.109 for being such a force of support, motivation and perhaps most importantly to me, kindness. I know we spent 10 hours a week being in this class but I can’t even fathom how many hours our instructors and members of the Engelward and Belcher labs spent preparing everything so that we could perform our experiments efficiently during class and produce these amazing end products – genetically modified E. Coli that produce useful things like ethanol and lactate, a tool to assess DNA repair capability, and a phage battery. I know this class and what I learned here will stick with me and for that, I’m beyond grateful.