A few hours before I wrote this article, I submitted the final results of the research project that I have been working on all summer. I wanted to reflect on the experience and while I won’t really go into detail about the project itself, I wanted to explain the personal academic growth I’ve gone through this summer.
At the beginning of the summer, I only had a slight idea about what was going on, and was just generally confused about what my project entailed. However, my professor ensured me that if I had patience, I would slowly start to figure things out. My approach on how to do this was just jumping in with computer programming experiments, and seeing how results were altered when I changed certain lines of coding. My other lab partners, I noticed, liked to read publications and articles in order to gain insight on how they should proceed with their projects. By running test after test, I slowly figured out what I was doing, and how my programs were working. I also had my professor there to answer all of my questions, no matter how basic they were.
Once I figured out what I was doing, I started to think of my own ideas -- or take the ideas suggested to me by my professor -- and put them to work. I began running larger tests and collecting larger amounts of data and I also had an effective method on how to compare results across similar, but in some ways different, tests. This, to me, was definitely the most rewarding part of my research.
Another way I’ve grown over the summer is the confidence I have gained in terms of my presentation skills. Yes, I always get super nervous before a presentation, but that’s just who I am. Once I start presenting, however, I speak clearly and confidently about what I’m researching. I had to give four presentations throughout the summer, and by the time I gave my last two presentations, which happened to be on the same day, I knew that I did a great job. Some of my lab partners and even one of my faculty mentors seemed very impressed, and complimented me on doing a very good job with articulating my ideas. My project was heavily math and computer science oriented, and most of my lab group had a background in biology and little in math or computer science. At the beginning of the summer, I had no idea how I would even explain to them what I was doing, but then again it is something I figured out, and I now feel that I could explain what I’ve been working on to just about anyone.
I had such a blast doing this research project, and I definitely plan on continuing researching my project next summer, and potentially continuing to work on it during the school year. It was great to be given this opportunity and I cannot wait to see where it goes next.
