Ever since I can remember when asked the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I never hesitated to always list teacher in my top 3 -- the other two were always hobbies of mine at the time. I love teaching is an understatement. In my mind, the more people know about anything the better and it always brings me a personal leve
Ever since I can remember when asked the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I never hesitated to always list teacher in my top 3 -- the other two were always hobbies of mine at the time. I love teaching is an understatement. In my mind, the more people know about anything the better and it always brings me a personal level of fulfillment when I can share something I learned with others. The beauty I see in teaching is that I always feel like I am a student. Every student has taught me something and provided me with a new perspective. Given how most of my life has centered around school, it gives me an excuse to constantly learn from others and I LOVE that.
I have also had the luxury of being blessed with some of the most passionate and caring teachers, so I had excellent role models. As a public school kiddo from K-12, I must admit I don't think there is a group of teachers that could have been better role models than these ones and I have to thank them for how much they have shaped and influenced my career choices. Their passion became my aspiration.
Biology is and always will be what drives my career. I have to give credit to my amazing high school biology teachers who worked so hard and tirelessly to bring biology to life for me. Get this -- I went to a public school and I was fortunate enough to have biology teachers who did this for our classes with their free time and money:
- t
Biology is and always will be what drives my career. I have to give credit to my amazing high school biology teachers who worked so hard and tirelessly to bring biology to life for me. Get this -- I went to a public school and I was fortunate enough to have biology teachers who did this for our classes with their free time and money:
- trip to the hospital morgue to dissect and learn the real-life applications of human anatomy
- gel-electorphoresis experiments about DNA physics and chemistry
- river wading experiments to collect water, bug, and plant specimens to learn about classification through dichotomous keys and alkalinity effects on ecosystems
- fruit fly breeding to understand genetics (coincidentally I ultimately ended up doing my PhD in this!)
This ultimately influenced me so much that I immediately declared a major during my undergraduate application process to study molecular, cellular, & developmental biology and to this day I am still fascinated with all things biology.
My personal experience is that if I don't understand the underlying basic biology, biological wet-lab techniques, or the research question, then the analysis of the data I recieve takes a LOT longer to analyze and is error prone due to inaccurate use of computational methods.
Therefore, my philosophy for performing data analysis has one r
My personal experience is that if I don't understand the underlying basic biology, biological wet-lab techniques, or the research question, then the analysis of the data I recieve takes a LOT longer to analyze and is error prone due to inaccurate use of computational methods.
Therefore, my philosophy for performing data analysis has one rule: I do not touch any data sets analytically until I meet with the biologists, ask questions, and educate myself, I feel that not only does it reflect poorly on myself when I make assumptions, but how pretentious of me to assume I know!
I remember attending graduate level computer science courses, where programmers would address biological questions and I would think to myself, "That isn't how it works in the biological world." I would be so frazzled because here I am, a PhD graduate student biologist, and some programmer would tell me how my world works and it just wasn't right.
This is why I also feel so strongly about constant interdisciplinary communication through every step of a bioinformatic project.
When I first started to code, I realized immediately that, there was a bit of a learning curve and heavy up front cost (in time) before I could see time-savings. However, this is also true of most new skills and I would argue, that you see the benefits of this skill relatively quickly even if the time saving is a little delayed.
Linux! Lin
When I first started to code, I realized immediately that, there was a bit of a learning curve and heavy up front cost (in time) before I could see time-savings. However, this is also true of most new skills and I would argue, that you see the benefits of this skill relatively quickly even if the time saving is a little delayed.
Linux! Linux! Linux! You will not regret this! I converted the OS on my computer initially as a dual boot WIndows/Linux PC to force myself to be comfortable on the command line, BEST. DECISION. EVER. I LOVE LOVE LINUX, and it is the only OS I use. The amount of informatics work you can actually run yourself just by knowing UNIX will baffle you. Counting lines of sequence or finding patterns can be done in one short command in a matter of minutes and sometimes even seconds!
My personal favorite programming language is Python and most software I develop is written in Python combined with shell and bash scripting, however, many biologists tend to like R. R is really great at statistical analyses, especially since it has a strong statistics support community with a nice graphic user interface making it less i
My personal favorite programming language is Python and most software I develop is written in Python combined with shell and bash scripting, however, many biologists tend to like R. R is really great at statistical analyses, especially since it has a strong statistics support community with a nice graphic user interface making it less intimidating (Rstudio).
One thing that I found really cool when I started getting more comfortable with programming, is that it can provide a "coding-high" similar to a "runner's high".
There is a fun puzzle-like quality of spending time to enjoy the process of code inception to product and having it finally work! It can be quite the adrenaline rush. I get so attached to something I write and something I am proud to have contributed to or created, that when it is finished I often get an overwhelming sense of joy and accomplishment. It is a really cool process to see and exerpience for yourself.
I only started to learn to program in the early stages of my graduate training -- I mean come on, why do I need to program, I'm a biologist! ;)
I started off taking many intro undergraduate-level computer science courses, and I struggled. Most of these students had been programming for years and years prior to beginning their degree and I
I only started to learn to program in the early stages of my graduate training -- I mean come on, why do I need to program, I'm a biologist! ;)
I started off taking many intro undergraduate-level computer science courses, and I struggled. Most of these students had been programming for years and years prior to beginning their degree and I had none. On top of that, my forte has never ever, ever in a million years been in mathematical theory, but darn it,if I can learn it you can too. That is how I know anyone can do it if they are willing to be patient and take the time to learn. Be patient with yourself and you too will find the process becomes easier over time. I ended up liking it so much that I pursued a MS in Computer Science and I will say I have never regretted doing it.
I promise you it will be worth your time and so many new opportunities will open for you.
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