Post Princeton Life: Interview with Isabelle Laurenzi ’15

Posted on by Raya Ward

For this year’s Spring Seasonal Series, entitled Post-Princeton Life: The Experiences of PCUR Alumni, each correspondent has selected a PCUR alum to interview about what they have been up to. We hope that these interviews will provide helpful insight into the many different paths Princeton students take after graduation. Here, Raya shares her interview.

~~~

Teaching, travel, Congress, the Writing Center, political theory, Yale! Former PCUR chief correspondent Isabelle Laurenzi graduated from Princeton in 2015 with a degree in Religion. She has since gone on to pursue an array of adventures and projects. Most recently, Isabelle completed her first year of a Ph.D. program at Yale in political theory. For our seasonal spring series, I caught up with Isabelle to learn more about her time at Princeton and explorations after. In our conversation, Isabelle and I connected over our shared interest in interdisciplinary studies and the joy of pursuing one’s interests through varied avenues.

Continue reading Post Princeton Life: Interview with Isabelle Laurenzi ’15

Independent Work Workshops at the Writing Center

Posted on by Ellie Breitfeld

 

Get a jumpstart on independent work with the Writing Center!

Want an organized JP or Senior thesis? Doing a quantitative research project? Want funding to support your great ideas? Sign up for the workshops below!

— This week —

Back by popular demand!
Defining your Research Question: Quantitative Projects in STEM and the Social Sciences
Thursday, March 1, 4:30pm -5:30pm
Guyot 100
 
Are you writing a quantitative JP or struggling with the introduction or discussion of your thesis?  This workshop will help you frame your project’s direction and next steps by:
• defining and refining a specific, actionable research question
• learning how to leverage secondary sources in relation to your data
• identifying the role and impact of your project in your field

 

Sign up here!

Continue reading Independent Work Workshops at the Writing Center

Go the Distance: Tips for Presenting your Research

Posted on by Ellie Breitfeld

The Mary W. George Freshman Research Conference is held every semester for freshman to present on their R3 research.

This past week I was invited to speak at the Mary W. George Freshman Research Conference. This conference is an opportunity for students to share their R3–the final open-ended research paper for Freshman Writing Seminar students– with a wider audience. But how do you go about converting a 10 to 15-page paper into just a 10-minute talk? How do you condense the intricacies of a month’s worth of research and analysis into just 10 short minutes?

This was the challenge I faced when I was first offered the opportunity to present my R3. On top of that, since I took my Writing Seminar last spring, I hadn’t even read the paper in over five months. But with guidance from my writing seminar professor and the Writing Center, I learned how to adapt such a detailed, academic argument for a more popular audience. Ultimately, through the process, I realized that this gap in time actually helped rather than hurt my development of an accessible presentation.

Continue reading Go the Distance: Tips for Presenting your Research

SUBMIT to Tortoise, Princeton’s Journal of Writing Pedagogy!

Posted on by Vidushi Sharma

Tortoise is an annual journal that publishes excerpts from Princeton undergraduate and graduate student research, featuring interdisciplinary work that emphasizes the writing process. With Tortoise’s “early action*” deadline coming up on December 16th at 5 PM, I sat down with senior editor Sahand Keshavarz Rahbar to learn what the journal is about.

The Tortoise staff! L-R: Harrison Blackman, Myrial Holbrook, Ron Martin Wilson, Sahand Keshavarz Rahbar, Ryan Vinh, Regina Zeng, Natalie Berkman,
The Tortoise staff! L-R: Harrison Blackman, Myrial Holbrook, Ron Martin Wilson, Sahand Keshavarz Rahbar, Ryan Vinh, Regina Zeng, Natalie Berkman.

Continue reading SUBMIT to Tortoise, Princeton’s Journal of Writing Pedagogy!

Swamped With Sources? Tips for Synthesis

Posted on by Elise Freeman

paperstack-292x300
Accurate representation of me drowning in sources

After looking at the midterm essay prompt for my French class, I was immediately overwhelmed by the amount of readings I would have to review and analyze. Dozens of articles, books, and excerpts loomed on the syllabus, and I had no idea where to begin. I often run into this problem. Synthesis is a meaningful combination of several sources, and can be difficult to do when everything seems important. The pressure to come up with a unifying and relevant thesis makes these initial stages of finding information even more stressful. Having experienced this struggle several times, I’ve come up with a few ways to organize sources that will hopefully be useful in the writing process!

Writing begins with a research question. That question might come from a given prompt, or from a personal interest. Either way, it provides a loose focus that will help eliminate irrelevant information when you’re reviewing and searching for sources. To speed up this process, make sure that if you’re reviewing sources you’ve already read in the semester, you’re just reviewing and not re-reading! You’ve already done the brunt of the work: simply skim through the readings to select ideas and passages that relate to your research question. Also, don’t feel pressured to use every source you’ve skimmed. Ultimately sources should function to bolster your own conclusions, so instead of crowding your paper with them, further analyze the ones most relevant to your research focus.

Continue reading Swamped With Sources? Tips for Synthesis