Final Project Link: BIOL 463 Final Project- Susan Xu
Reflection:
When starting the final project, all I knew was that I wanted it to be somewhat similar to the question I proposed for the “If I were a Developmental Biologist” assignment. However, narrowing down the question to something specifically testable with one experiment was actually quite difficult and so I relied mainly on my research to direct me to a specific question. Researching was probably the hardest part of the project and reading from one paper to the next forced me to tie together any relevant information and also mentally store important facts for future reference. I then incorporated all my research and used relevant information and insights to formulate my final question.. this of course then led to even more research to assist my specific question. From this project, I learned how to come up with a hypothesis and prediction for my research question and from other papers and studies conducted. This was something I’ve never done before so all these steps that we had to take in designing a research question was new to me. When designing the actual experiment, I learned to select the technique that would specifically measure what I wanted to compare in my results. I also looked at other studies that measured similar things and so mainly got inspiration from those relevant studies. Overall, the project definitely had its ups and downs but I eventually managed to navigate through that and deal with it positively to finish the project! 🙂