BIOL368/F11:Class Journal Week 5

Samantha Hurndon

What was the best part of working with a partner on this project? What was the worst part? I found working with a partner to be beneficial because we bounced ideas off each other and formulated a question we both agreed upon. After forming a question it was good to have two minds suggesting methods in which we would carry out our project. I didn’t find that there were any negatives to working with my partner. However, in the past I have had partners who wouldn’t listen to any of my ideas. Luckily, this was not the case for this lab.
Besides the scientific conclusion of your project, what have you learned about the process of doing research as a result of this project? I learned projects can be a mess, but that's ok! Making predictions, rejecting them, having to modify many times, this is all part of research.

Samantha M. Hurndon 19:44, 28 September 2011 (EDT)

The best part in working with a partner on this project learning from each other. Although the workload is split and there is less work for an individual person, the best way of knowing something is to actually teach it to one another. The worst part about this was that there are individual sections of which one person is primarily focused (to some extent) and the other person doesn't get to know the information as well as the other.
I have learned that research is a very tedious thing. A lot of time is put into finding articles that support your hypothesis and the claim you are trying to make.

The best part about working with a partner during this project was being able to bounce ideas off each other and be able to get immediate feedback. I liked how we were able to settle on an idea quickly and get to work. We were lucky to find something that interested us both enough to follow up with more research. The worst part was conflicting schedules. It is tough to meet up and work together with different commitments like class, work, athletics, etc.
I learned that coming up with the idea of what to research is not even close to a tenth of the work to be done with research projects. Also, I learned the broader the idea, the more research there needs to be done.

Robert W Arnold 21:20, 4 October 2011 (EDT)

The best part about working with a partner is both people can help each other out if they don't understand something as well as their partner does. Having a partner is helpful because it's less work for each individual to do and it's great to have someone to talk through the subject with. The worst part about having a partner is figuring out when you can get together to work on a project because oftentimes you work on a completely different schedule than your partner.
What I have learned about the process of doing research is it is time-consuming because oftentimes your predictions are wrong and you have to go back and figure out why you were wrong.

Nicolette S. Harmon 19:43, 4 October 2011 (EDT):

The best part about working with a partner is the boost to the creative process of being able to bounce ideas back and forth and the ability to gather perspective on whether or not your own ideas make sense and/or how they can be improved. The hardest part is the lack of freedom when it comes to working hours because you both have different schedules
I've learned that phylogenetic trees can be very hard to interpret and consequently that research requires patience and persistence if you want to achieve anything of value.

Chris H. Rhodes 19:26, 4 October 2011 (EDT)

The best part of having a partner is that the work can be divided. Division of labor has always been touted for its efficiency.

The worst part is my partner is standing over me watching me write this...shes scary.

What I learned about researching is that time is the biggest adversary. Knowing that the seconds are closing in on you places so many limitations when you know that there is more to be explored. This is unfortunate, but clearly prominent in the scientific world when it comes to presenting t=research.

Isaiah M. Castaneda 23:33, 4 October 2011 (EDT)

The best part of working in a group is you can share the load of all the work, and you get new ideas and insights you normally wouldn't have. However the worst part is sometimes trying to find common ground and a subject that you all can be interested in.
Sometimes you don't get your question answered satisfactorily or you are proven wrong. And sometimes you get an answer you weren't even expecting.

Zeb Russo 00:55, 5 October 2011 (EDT)