Due Date's Eve

Today, being the day before the due date of our lab report, was spent writing, reviewing, and rewriting. Our instructors originally had planned to keep moving on with the lesson plan and introduce us to new concepts and new labs. Their intention behind this is to show us what it is like for scientists who have many different experiments going on at once. Although we started of the day according to plan, conversations would constantly shift to doubts we had about the paper. Soon, everyone’s questions required more explanation and therefore took up a lot of today’s time.

My lab partner, Crystal.

One of the questions everyone seemed to have was how to properly write about our procedures of each lab. Originally, our lab instructor, Dawn, had mentioned the procedure section should only take around two paragraphs but many of us were struggling to shorten it down to that amount. This was due to the confusion about the details that we were required to mention and those that would be common sense for the scientific audience we are writing for.

Looks easy, right? It wasn't.

There was also a lot of confusion about how to report the results of some of our labs, specifically our gel electrophoresis lab. Once my partner and I got to the lab report instructions on the discussion of gel electrophoresis, we realized we did not have many of the details needed. We brought this up to Dr. Fineschi and Dawn. They reminded us our gel electrophoresis lab took place in the last few moments on a day with multiple labs and was therefore very rushed. We did not get to even graph our data. Dawn thought it would be difficult for us to learn how to do it this late in the game but Dr. Fineschi thought it was a learning opportunity so she taught us how to do it. Her explanation was very concise and in theory it sounded easy but once I sat to do it on my own I did not even know how to begin. Luckily, she and Dawn were open to working with me until I understood how to do every step and why we did it.

Today, although stressful, was better than most days. I felt a lot more comfortable asking questions and I am finally starting to feel confident with my skills in lab. I also felt a little better about the paper since a lot of my questions were answered in class today. Crystal and I worked all night on our paper but we still have many questions. Hopefully, we are able to get them answered tomorrow and finish writing our paper to the best of our abilities.