Principedia: A Wiki for Better Learning!

Posted on by Vidushi Sharma

Last Saturday, I joined around forty students and faculty members gathered in the Mathey common room as part of Principedia’s fall Hackademics. The goal? In the words of McGraw Associate Director Nic Voge, sharing what students have learned about the hidden curriculum at Princeton.

Students working hard at the Spring 2015 Hackademics! Image courtesy of the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning. Used with permission.
Students working hard at the Spring 2015 Hackademics! 

Whether or not they call it by name, most students have recognized the “hidden curriculum” of learning expectations and demands behind every Princeton course. I’ve often had to puzzle out the best learning strategies for my classes– from watching MAT 202 video review sessions before exams to talking through principal parts with friends in language classes– by trial and error. Online course evaluations are usually emotionally-charged and of limited help, and professors and TAs don’t always give students concrete advice. Continue reading Principedia: A Wiki for Better Learning!

An Ode to Academic Free Time

Posted on by Vidushi Sharma

This summer, in the unlikely sleepy town of Selianitika, Greece, I had an unforgettable immersive learning experience. I applied to the Paideia Institute’s Living Greek in Greece program, devoted to immersion in Ancient Greek, at the urging of a friend. It would be perspective-changing, she said. Instead of running between classes and juggling ten different assignments at once, I would have one task–to grow comfortable with Ancient Greek–and an incredible amount of free time.

The Selianitika coastline, where I walked every day during my time in Greece!

It was a perspective-changing shift from my Princeton experience. I often feel limited by the lack of time available to fully experience the overwhelming material in my classes on campus. Beyond my Indo-European linguistics class, I want to browse through the Classics section of the library to see what I can find. In my computer science course, I want to do the optional exercises and play around with code. But independent exploration and extra-curricular learning can be hard to make time for, and I often end up working from one assignment to the next. Breadth and depth are challenging to achieve together.

Continue reading An Ode to Academic Free Time

The Aesthetics of Mathematics: Bringing Together Princeton’s Academics

Posted on by Vidushi Sharma

At the beginning of last month, my Greek professor forwarded the class an email titled “The Aesthetics of (Greek!) Mathematics!” Within the email, he cheerily suggested that we attend this special lecture event at 4:30pm, “for a reminder of why we still want to learn Greek (and yes, math, too).”

After an afternoon of studying in Holder Courtyard, I dragged a friend along to McCormick to investigate. The Faber lecture, given by Professor Reviel Netz of Stanford University, was hosted by the Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in the Humanities. Past lectures have also been interdisciplinary in nature, covering topics like “Orality and Sociality” or “Why do we Care about Dead Bodies?”

Springtime studying in Holder Courtyard! Photo courtesy of Dalma Foldesi '15.
Springtime studying in Holder Courtyard!

The first thing I noticed was the diversity of the audience. Graduate students, professors, and a few undergraduates sat together in the room. I immediately recognized my linear algebra professor sitting with an art history graduate student, and behind my current philosophy professor. Next to me sat a group of people chuckling and exchanging jokes, who I later discovered were professors in the Woodrow Wilson School.

Continue reading The Aesthetics of Mathematics: Bringing Together Princeton’s Academics

Finding the Department that Fits

Posted on by Vidushi Sharma

Last year, around this time, I felt extremely unsure about my academic path at Princeton. I had always known I wanted to study something interdisciplinary, preferably combining my interests in science and the humanities. Cognitive science, which combines neuroscience with philosophy, seemed like the perfect fit. However, as Princeton had no neuroscience major and no cognitive science program, I wasn’t sure which department or program would allow me the appropriate amount of support and flexibility to do interdisciplinary research that bridged science and the humanities.

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During the spring of last year, I started to think about how to make Princeton a better academic home for myself!

For a while, my go-to departmental options had been computer science or economics. After talking to students and attempting to contact department representatives, I became worried about whether these departments would offer me the interdisciplinary flexibility to do the research I wanted. I thought about other university programs, like Stanford’s Symbolic Systems, which “focuses on computers and minds: artificial and natural systems that use symbols to communicate, and to represent information” (see more here: https://symsys.stanford.edu!) Sometimes, I wondered if I should consider transferring to another school.

One simple step at the end of spring semester of my freshman year reassured me about my options at Princeton and has kept me on the right track ever since. Continue reading Finding the Department that Fits

Tackling our Academic Biases

Posted on by Vidushi Sharma

This week, I was having a standard lunchtime conversation with friends about our classes. The conversation veered to next fall’s course offerings, which will include the three legendary classes Practical Ethics, Constitutional Interpretation, and Politics of Modern Islam. Having recently read reviews of Constitutional Interpretation, I joked that it might be unwise to take all three simultaneously.

“This might be a very B.S.E thing to say,” one friend said, “but I don’t understand how humanities classes can be hard.”

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A sampling of my bookshelf!

As a philosophy major, I felt shocked, and then defensive. How could an entire set of disciplines be “easy,” unless a student is uninformed or pursuing it incorrectly? I felt like retorting that most of the engineers in my humanities classes did not read what was assigned, wrote papers the night before they were due, and failed to be productive precept participants. I bit my tongue. My thoughts were equally unproductive generalizations. Continue reading Tackling our Academic Biases

Student Profile: Alexandria Herr, 2017!

Posted on by Vidushi Sharma

So far, PCUR bloggers have focused on what we’ve learned from our own research journeys. This week, I thought I would share an interview I conducted with another student last fall about what he/she is working. Princeton students are always involved in something interesting, and Alex Herr is no exception.

I met Alex in our freshman seminar, Earth’s Environments and Ancient Civilizations, in which we travelled to Cyprus and analyzed topics of climate, minerals, and topography using geophyics and other scientific methods. A proud Forbesian and member of the class of 2017, Alex is a tentative Ecology and Evolutionary Biology major and plans on getting certificates in Computer Science and Latin American Studies. Last semester, she was enrolled in JRN 440: Unconventional Foreign Correspondence, a creative writing poetry class, GEO 365, and SPA 103.

What are your favorite pieces of research from past classes at Princeton?

Last year, in Ancient Egyptian Archaeology, we went to the archives of the art museum and were assigned a certain number of Egyptian scarabs, or beetle-shaped amulets. Scarab beetles were used as seals mounted on rings or simply as amulets placed over the heart of a mummy. Our final project was to identify where the scarabs in the art museum were from and whether they were real.

Scarabs are the ancient world’s equivalent of an “I Love NY” shirt. As individual records, they are not that special, but as conglomerates, they tell researchers a lot about a time period. One of my scarabs had been listed as a fake, but I was able to make an argument for its authenticity. Continue reading Student Profile: Alexandria Herr, 2017!

How to Write a Paper in Two Days: A Timeline

Posted on by Vidushi Sharma

Last week, Yuem wrote about keeping track of his progress on his senior thesis—a project with distant deadlines. As an underclassman, I usually face shorter-term deadlines for class essays and problem sets, and these require a similar, but condensed approach.

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This post has real-life inspiration. Next Thursday, I have a paper due for my philosophy class on Nietzsche. Weekdays are busy with problem sets and assignments. I do not expect myself to start consolidating material for the paper till this weekend, which leaves me plenty of time to plan an effective essay.

Here’s the schedule I successfully used last time, when I was looking at parts of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra and the Gay Science. Granted, the whole process I’m proposing is longer than just two days, but I promise if you use the pre-writing steps I suggest, you’ll be able to do the actual writing in a much shorter period of time!

5 Days before Due Date: Finish the core readings!

I spent about half of my weekend finishing the readings for the class that I had not been able to finish in time for lecture. Surprisingly few people realize how helpful this is. In a paper-based class, certain prompts will lend themselves to specific readings. You can write a decent paper–maybe even get a “good grade”– by reading only what is absolutely necessary for a paper, but it will fall far short of your potential. You are surrounded by world-class facilities and faculty–don’t waste your time on something sub-par. The best part about writing a paper is finding unexpected connections, after all. Continue reading How to Write a Paper in Two Days: A Timeline

Undeclared, Undecided–Still Eligible for Departmental Funding!

Posted on by Vidushi Sharma

By late March of my freshman year, I was wholly undecided about my major. I had taken classes in a wide range of departments including geoscience, math, comparative literature, and philosophy. I had not taken a single Classics course. But I still decided–and succeeded–in applying for funding from the Classics department and gaining exposure to a new ancient language last summer.

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Before I applied for Classics funding, I felt unprepared about my summer plans. I had taken two “mandatory” class trips during my fall and spring break, to Cyprus and Greece respectively, so I was used to the thrill of university-sponsored travel. I had assumed that I would spend my summer abroad and counted on attending a global seminar. After being rejected from my choice global seminar, however, I dreaded speaking to people about my nonexistent plans. I doubted that I had time to find and apply to international summer programs. I reset my sights around my home near New York City and thought about what I really wanted to learn. Continue reading Undeclared, Undecided–Still Eligible for Departmental Funding!

All Roads Lead to Gandhara: Integrating Science and the Classics

Posted on by Vidushi Sharma

Around this time last fall, I was spending consistent hours in the basement of Fine Hall, gathering data from the Map Library and struggling with ArcGIS and Matlab to make sense of it. My goal? To explain the success of Gandhara, a little-known ancient civilization in northwest Pakistan.

I first learned about the region during an independent research project in my last semester of high school Latin. Gandhara started as an outpost for Alexander the Great’s generals but grew into an incredible region of diffusion between Greek and Indian cultures. Greek and Buddhist influences merged freely in philosophy, religion, and art, and not much research existed on the area.

Gandhara slipped from my mind until I resumed school in my first semester at Princeton. I was enrolled in FRS 187: Earth’s Environments and Ancient Civilizations, a geoscience seminar that traveled to Cyprus over fall break. In Cyprus, we used geophysics to examine unexcavated areas near a Princeton archeological dig house. As part of the course, we were responsible for writing three scientific papers explaining why a civilization succeeded or failed using topographical, mineral, and climate-based evidence. My mind turned naturally to Gandhara. I wanted to create one comprehensive paper examining its success, but I wasn’t sure that I could find sufficient evidence from three different angles.

This is a map that I created to provide an overview of Alexander’s route into Gandhara and major cities along his way.

Continue reading All Roads Lead to Gandhara: Integrating Science and the Classics

Pondering Paterson: Personal Curiosity as Academic Research

Posted on by Vidushi Sharma

Paterson
The view from Garrett mountain of Paterson today. Image copyright 2012 ALPHA PML LLC Pablo & Millie Lopez, from Alpha PML Visual Information Service (http://alphapml.com/2012/09/02/garret-mountain-reservation-view-of-downtown-paterson-nj/pml_2681_6831/)

Twice daily for seven years, I traversed the suburbs of Northern New Jersey on NJ Transit’s Main Line on my way to and from school. My journey began across from my home in the wetlands area of Secaucus and ended in the preened suburb of Ridgewood. I grew to memorize the sequence of towns I would pass in the voice of the train’s automaton announcer: Kingsland, Delawanna, Passaic, Clifton, Paterson, Hawthorne, Glen Rock, Ridgewood. I was fascinated by the changes in landscape from city to city, the most drastic of which occurred while passing through Paterson. Suddenly, the town station no longer overlooked comfortable suburban streets but rather looming factory remnants, blue rows of abandoned silk mills, and a bustling downtown area shadowed by mountains. The cultural makeup of the train shifted from a crowd of mostly-white businessmen to a multicultural diaspora of African-Americans, Peruvians, Arabs, and Latinos of all ages. Paterson was a sharp contrast to its upper class Bergen county neighbors, but I never understood why.

When I took my writing seminar on tragedy, I approached my final research project thinking about interpersonal relationships and wanting to write about something that was personally meaningful. I turned to public transportation, one of my favorite topics. I reread my blog about conversations with colorful commuters on New Jersey trains. Because I was already thinking about places of disconnect, my personal curiosity about Paterson spiked. How did it change from America’s wealthiest town to one of its poorest? What did residents experience, nestled in an otherwise pristine area of New Jersey? As in most research motivated by personal curiosity, I knew a bit of luck was key. I did not know whether literature on Paterson and theories I could apply to it even existed. Continue reading Pondering Paterson: Personal Curiosity as Academic Research