I went to the senior thesis archives. Here’s what I found.

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The basement of the Lewis Library Fine Hall Wing is quiet.

"Where are the books?" you may well ask. The Lewis Library answers...
“Where are the books?” you may well ask. The Lewis Library answers…

There aren’t many books down here, and the ones that are here don’t seem to have many readers. There are dim-lit shelves of dusty periodicals, and tomes with titles like Essential Entomology: An Order-by-Order Introduction (a book I actually borrowed for a project last semester).

And then there are the theses, and these are something else. For sophomores looking at concentration selection, theses give a true sense of what it means to be part of a given department at Princeton. Even simply flipping through titles can give a distilled, unbiased sense of the type – and diversity – of work that students in each department undertake.

Math theses archived from the 1970's.
Math theses archived from the 1970’s.

As a junior, I went to the archives this week under the pressure of an impending deadline for my EEB thesis funding application. In the black-bound books, I felt optimism and excitement, a sense of both broad possibility inspired by all my peers have done, and realistic scope that comes from the recognition that these books are finite, and that writing one is possible.

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The Eternal Struggle Between Academics and Extracurriculars

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It’s the beginning of a new semester, and I’m sure many students are asking themselves the same question I ask myself time and time again: How much can I realistically take on? Balancing academics and extracurricular activities is always delicate. And even though it feels particularly strained right now as I prepare to write my spring JP, I know how important it is to find time for what I love to do. The purpose of this post is not to provide some cure-all for your scheduling woes — because everyone works differently — but rather to talk about what has worked for me.

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Snapshot from PUP’s Fall ’14 production of Little Shop of Horrors, in which I played Seymour — a botanist who must murder to feed his man-eating plant.

Most of my time outside of class is dedicated to theater. I have performed in many productions on campus and serve as the Princeton University Players’ Vice President. Beyond the immense joys I find in making theater, it has taught me how to effectively manage my time: an invaluable skill for big research projects. Since rehearsals often run late, I’ve had to learn to speed-read during 10-minute breaks and work productively during time off. Luckily, there is support in the struggle to get everything done. McGraw has resources to help us develop more effective time management strategies and to make our time more productive.

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4.5 Things to Remind Yourself Before Your Second JP

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Exactly 26 days ago, I submitted my junior paper on U.S. immigration policy.

To repeat: I wrote a JP, I submitted it, and it’s completely done.

I couldn’t imagine writing those words back in September, when everything about junior independent work seemed completely overwhelming. I struggled to find a topic because I had limited experience with the scholarly field of U.S immigration. After choosing, and then changing, my paper topic, I needed to recruit participants, schedule interviews, and transcribe every word the participants said. All that led to a 24 page draft (written during Thanksgiving break, of course) and two subsequent drafts before I submitted the final paper on January 5th.

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Directly relevant: 4.5 things I should not eat when I’m stressing about JP deadlines.

While I enjoy talking about my fall JP in the past tense, my upcoming spring JP necessitates a return to the present. This time, however, there is one crucial difference: I finally know how JPs work. And that understanding can revolutionize a scholarly independent project — because once you know how JPs work, their long page limits and enormous possibilities no longer seem scary. So, here are 4.5 things I want to remind myself (and share with you) about the JP process:

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Senior Reflection: What I Wish I Knew During My Spring JP

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Small details are important to consider when planning to use your Spring JP as a springboard for your thesis!
Small details (like knowing which computer clusters have specific software ) are important to consider when planning to use your Spring JP as a springboard for your thesis!

As spring semester approaches, most juniors are trying not to think about what’s coming next: the spring JP. For psychology majors, the spring JP is a project proposal that often becomes a student’s senior thesis. My JP-turned-thesis was on learning science through composing analogies, a topic that intersects my interests in psychology and education. While I was very excited about crafting my spring JP, I also remember feeling very overwhelmed. I knew that a well-done JP would save my senior self TONS of time in the thesis-writing process — but I also knew that planning your thesis during junior year puts a lot of pressure on you! Though I successfully used my spring JP as the foundation for my thesis, there are many things I wish I had thought about when I first designed the project. Here are some tips to be mindful of if you plan to base your thesis on your spring JP (and save yourself a lot of time during senior year!)

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The Post-JP Slump: When Dean’s Date Feels Wrong

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On Tuesday, I turned in my JP, a 34-page labor of love that was half a year in the workings. And now some real talk: After that experience, writing Dean’s Date papers feels wrong.

My JP was, perhaps, my single biggest academic accomplishment at Princeton. Submitting it was the culmination of six months of work that began this summer in Juchitán de Zaragoza, a rural city in Oaxaca, Mexico. Juchitán, as I’ve written about before, is widely known for the indigenous Zapotec culture’s acceptance of a third gender option, muxe (pronounced “moo-shay”), and for the myth that it is a “matriarchal” society.

There, I conducted a series of in-depth interviews with activists and NGO workers, seeking to understand their work, how they define their communities, and what they believe to be the greatest issues facing women and LGBTQ+ people in the region. These interviews were the basis of my JP: ethnographic non-fiction, in which I told my story — the process of getting to know a culture so distant from my own — while telling others’.

In Juchitán's center, just outside of an office where I performed an interview
In Juchitán’s center, just outside of a government office where I conducted an interview.

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A Love-Hate Relationship with Fall Reading Period

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Fall Reading Period has been growing on me.
Fall Reading Period has definitely grown on me.

Reading Period is probably one of the most unique times of the Princeton semester. Fall semester’s Reading Period is particularly special (or brutal, some people would say), because it comes after winter break and makes January one long month filled with studying and finals. But after four years of enduring the looks of pity and shock from friends and family, it’s somehow been growing on me. The prospect of having work over break is still stressful, but I’ve come to strike a balance between work and relaxation and even enjoy parts of Reading Period—and winter break, too.

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Elegy and ode: Finding life on a bleached reef

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2015 shattered temperature records worldwide. This year’s El Niño has been making headlines in the coral reef community since early this summer, as record-high temperatures hit coral reefs more severely than scientists have ever seen before. Yet even knowing these facts, I was not prepared for the devastation I saw at home in Hawaii over winter break.

A healthy coral colony sample from a bleaching study that took place in Bermuda last summer. The tiny flower-like circles are polyps - each one is a coral individual, which together comprise the colony. The yellow color is from this coral's symbiotic zooxanthellae, not the coral itself.
A healthy coral sample (Porites astreoides) from a bleaching study in Bermuda last summer. The tiny flower-like circles are polyps – each one is a coral individual, which together comprise the colony. The coral itself is white – the bright yellow color comes from its symbiotic zooxanthellae.

The population of Pocillopora meandrina, the cauliflower coral that once dotted the coastline of Kailua-Kona, my hometown, has been decimated. The reef is left with the feel of an evacuated city: the coral heads are like abandoned buildings, their skeletons lifeless and vacant. Lacking the organisms that sustained them, they slowly begin to crumble.

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Research Resolutions

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Happy New Year! In the January spirit of new-year-new-you, PCURs are sharing their Research Resolutions – things we plan to do, or do differently, in 2016. Take a look at what we hope to have in store:

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What are your research resolutions? Let us know here, and keep us posted on your progress!

— Melissa Parnagian, Chief Correspondent 

The Importance of Being Vocal: Student Feedback at Princeton

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Suggestions and feedback are an extremely important part of the University’s growth! Have you ever noticed this suggestions box by the Welcome Desk in Frist? 

With Princeton ranked as the No. 1 school in America, it’s easy to assume that everything here is the best that it can be: We have great professors, amazing resources, and will graduate with a degree that is highly esteemed around the world. Surrounded by all of the University’s accolades, we oftentimes forget how important the student voice is to the University’s growth and development. Over these past few weeks, however, I’ve discovered how integral students are to improving academic and social life here on campus.

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Human Resources for your Independent Work!

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It’s JP crunch time! Many students like myself are working feverishly on campus on their junior papers as winter break approaches. This week, I’m going to share advice about the single most useful resource I’ve found on campus as I work through my own junior paper: Princeton professors. Scheduling a meeting or two with faculty relevant to your work, whether you know them or not, will help you greatly in your path to a great research paper.

First, some background: many departments have different guidelines and setups for junior independent work. Most departments require two junior papers; some require one. In the philosophy department, all juniors take a small (4-5 person) topical junior seminar in the fall to guide them into the process of writing independently. This fall’s topics were Consequentialism & Common Sense Morality, Newcomb’s Problem, and Skepticism, Reason, & Faith. In seminar sessions, students discuss issues central to these topics.

I spent my semester in Consequentialism & Common Sense Morality reading Shelly Kagan’s Normative Ethics and debating features of the text with my classmates. The literature was vast, spanning metaethics (what are the fundamental bases of ethical theories? are they valid?), normative ethics (what are relevant factors that make actions good or bad?), and applied ethics (what are answers to moral questions people face in their lives?). Any one of these categories holds thousands of unanswered, often-debated questions. So by the second half of the semester, when it was time to choose a junior paper topic, I felt predictably lost.

I’d be lying if I said I’ve never gotten lost on campus…but feeling lost on a research paper is much scarier!

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