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 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

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)