WE ARE A TEAM

Our group is consisted of 11 students from top high schools and middle schools. We were instructed by several PhDs of various fields from Sun Yat-sen University, which is a top 10 university in China, taking interdisciplinary courses such as programming, graphic design, and speech skills. Admittedly, given our academic backgrounds as high school students, it was financially and academically difficult for us to carry out an excellent experimental project as collegiate wet teams did. Therefore, we chose software track in iGEM this year and put our emphasis on human practice and educational outreaching to help improve iGEM wet teams’ working efficiency as well as extend the social influence of synthetic biology.
At our first acquaintance, all we knew about each other was that we shared the same curiosity on biology and pursued for the same goal. Motivated by the same ambition, we worked together and gradually grew into a powerful and unbreakable team. This summer is the harvest season for us all. Not only did we complete a project that seemed extremely tough for us at the beginning, but we acquired knowledge that we may have never dabbled in before. Most unforgettably, we have been through the most brilliant summer in our lives with the precious and ever-lasting friendship among our team members and our mentors.
Starting from scratch, we were on the way.
The initial experience was delicate yet amazing. Strangers sat in a small room, saying hello to others with bit of timidity, pretending to focus on other stuffs, but couldn’t help chit-chatting with the person sitting nearby when typing on the laptops. Step by step, we gained knowledge, developed skills, and finally got to understand each other from the deep of our hearts. Together, we shared happiness and sorrow, gave our hands to one another when needed, and surmounted all the barriers, including stress that seemingly impossible for us to confront with such courage, on our way. Eventually, we became an inseparable team. It’s wonderful and ineffable to stand at this point and retrospect the days we had struggled yet stuck tightly together.
Still on the way, we struggled for an unpredictable future, an alluring dream.
During the incipient months, we merely had a vague picture of our project and limited communication with each other. In turn, our project was proceeded really slowly back then. In the summer vacation, we lived together for ten days, with an immature project at the very beginning. But nothing could prevent us from achieving our dream. We searched for courses and tried frequently to get better visual effects of graphic designs because we were not adepts at it initially. None of us are native English speakers, so we had to practice for the presentations repeatedly while constantly modify the prototype of our project.
We are a team.
There were also moments when we argued because of divergences; there were moments when we jumped into the swimming pool together and enjoyed the relaxing atmosphere after a whole day’s exhausting but joyful work; there were also moments when some of us could not bear the pressure and cried secretly, but fortunately, received the comfort and encouragement from the rest of the team. No matter what we have encountered, joy or sorrow, victory or defeat, we always took it as a possibility to share our views and consummate our project.
We are a team. It’s hard ever to imagine the long struggling way without any single person in this team.
We are a team. It will never be a whole if anyone is absent. We are a Team. Thanks to everyone’s effort and contribution.