Blog Assignment #10: Research Project Reflection (individual)

   Throughout this research project there were many things I've learned just as an individual, scientist and a team mate. Individually I have learned that research is fun and I personally really enjoyed our topic and our research. I think because bacteria was so common but personal to our own bodies it was interesting for me to learn rather than trying to research something I didn't really care about. I also learned that research is very tedious and although there is no "correct way" to go about researching, the process is always changing or will vary depending on everyone's topic. As a team mate, I learned that everyone needs to put in their part of the research. If one of us was lacking or being lazy on our research days we would've fallen behind, there was always something to do and I personally felt like we were always a little behind because of the tedious steps we had to take for our research project.

There were many difficulties throughout of research, but personally I think one of our biggest difficulties was getting down our routine and trying to figure out how to test our trials, I think we roughly had about 2 months to do the research project and although that seems like it was a lot of time. I felt that our group did not have enough time, and just as we started to get the routine and research down for our bacteria growth, we reached the end of the quarter. I do think that I will remember this research project forever, because it was something I was really intrigued. How simple bacteria and grow into this colony and you can visually see the affects of the mouthwashes. I will forever use Crest Clinical unless I decide to do this type of research again 10 years later and there's another mouthwash that's better.