This was my first time using my own terminal to analyze output from high through put sequencing of the 16s rRNA. It was an experience that was both frustrating but also very awarding. Being able to manipulate so much data using just your lab top that quickly is a valuable skill I am sure I will have to use in future research. It was a process that required problem solving skills, for example when the code wasn’t given and you had to look it up, and also team work skills, as I learned how helpful it was to have peers (and especially professors) to bounce ideas off of and help me solve problems. This year has been hard as we haven’t been able to work in person, on a lab bench, to visually learn, so I appreciated having a challenge that brought me closer to a lab bench like experience. I am not saying I am going to switch majors and go into computer science or that I would rather be coding than doing wet lab research but I do have a greater respect for data analysis now.
If I had something to say to the next class it would be; you can get through this, it’s going to be frustrating, you are going to get errors, but when you make the errors you learn because you are forced to confront the mistakes you made. Also that genome analysis is extremely important for microbiology and it is amazing the amount of conclusion you can draw with a few key strokes on your own laptop.
