Undergraduates’ first brush with independent research can be tricky, but also rewarding.
If you’ve never completed an independent work project, you probably have questions about how the process works. As usual, if you’ve got questions, PCUR has answers. Join me, Zoe, and others for an informal discussion about independent work tomorrow night (Tuesday, April 5) from 9-10pm in Butler College (1915 room). Check out the flyer below:
— Melissa Parnagian, Chief Correspondent
March Madness takes on a whole new meaning for Princeton seniors, who are working hard to stay ahead of upcoming thesis deadlines. With submission dates as early as next week, many seniors spent their spring breaks finishing up data collection, editing their drafts, and attending thesis-geared events (like bootcamps).
I spent my break watching basketball, being terrified of pollen every time I left my house, and sleeping for over 12 hours a day… But, now that I’m back on campus I thought it would be a good idea to ask seniors a few questions about their projects. Until this semester, I knew almost nothing about the thesis process that defines senior life in the months before graduation. Previously, most of my conversations with my senior friends would go something like:
Me: Hey, how’s the thesis coming along?
Senior: (Groan)
Me: You’ll get through it! Only a few more weeks!
And so I thought it might be time for me to ask more meaningful questions (given that my previous interactions only seemed to remind everyone of all the work they had left).
Continue reading Underclassmen: Make the Most of Thesis Season!
There are some things that department websites just don’t tell you.
For example: The History Department holds its mandatory senior thesis planning meeting one hour after spring junior papers are due. (“People hadn’t slept for days!” a friend told me recently.) The Spanish Department, on the other hand, hosts monthly department-wide dinners.
I am amazed — unfortunate scheduling and free food aside — by how much I didn’t know when I chose my major. Talking to other upperclassmen, I get the feeling that I’m not the only one. We all seem to have bumbled through the process, some better-informed than others. When April rolled around, we all picked something and moved on.
Surely, there’s a better way to sift through the options. Looking back at major declaration season, here are the three questions I wish I’d known to ask. Continue reading A survival guide for major declaration season
Every year, students across the country come to campus for HackPrinceton, the biannual hackathon event that boasts thousands of visitors. While I’ve never attended a hackathon in my life, quite a few of my friends attend them regularly. They gather in small teams to work on technology and engineering projects (colloquially called “hacking”) at the event, which culminates in group presentations of the projects they’ve created. I’ve noticed that the hackers who are involved in research or entrepreneurship find the hackathon experience especially rewarding. So, this spring, I plan to try out my first hackathon at HackPrinceton. In preparation for the April 1-3 session. I decided to learn a little more about hackathons and how they relate to research in general.
Here’s a snippet of my Q&A with 2015-16 HackPrinceton Directors Zach Liu ’18 and Monica Shi ’18, who helped run the incredibly successful HackPrinceton Fall 2015.
Me (Kavi): What exactly is a Hackathon?
Monica: Essentially it’s an event where people come together to think of and build projects. Traditionally, these projects are divided between software and hardware, but there are hackathons for other things – like design projects. It’s a great way for people to learn about programming and technology by getting together with a group of like-minded students to build a project for 24-36 hours. It’s kind of like a marathon where you have any and all the materials you need to build your project. The hackathon organizers will do their best to make sure you’re able to hack with all the resources you need – including all the food you need to keep you satisfied. At the end, teams get feedback from a panel of judges, and the top projects win awesome prizes!
Continue reading Q&A with HackPrinceton Directors
When you’re struggling to begin a paper, perhaps the last thing on your mind is the possibility that you might have too much to write about. But sometimes when you’re struggling to start, it’s not because you don’t have enough to write about, but because you have too much. Have you ever found yourself with so many competing ideas bouncing around in your head, each clamoring for expression, to the point that your writing has no focus?
When I find myself in such a situation, I remember an unfortunately violent piece of editing advice: Kill your children — that is, don’t let your attachment to particular sentences or ideas prevent you from cutting them.
Just do it. Don’t convince yourself that an idea that it must remain in your draft at the expense of the quality of the work as a whole. However painful it may be, there will come a time when you have to sacrifice something for the good of the piece.
This fall, I wrote a piece for my journalism class, later published in the Daily Princetonian, about Princeton’s Career Services office. In the course of researching for the article, I interviewed more than a dozen students, alumni, and career service staff. Musicians and consultants, grad students and executives – everyone had their own story, their own advice to offer me and other students.
Continue reading The value of harsh editing: “Killing your children”
I’m reading The Lives of a Cell, by Lewis Thomas – a biologist who did his undergraduate degree at Princeton before becoming a renowned science writer and getting Lewis Thomas Labs named after him. It’s a beautifully philosophical piece of writing, as Thomas draws parallels between the miniscule cellular networks which give us life and the massive, invisible human networks which give that life meaning. But what jumped out at me wasn’t one of the many scientific tidbits with which Thomas peppers his writing, but a quote Thomas uses from an essay by physicist John Ziman: “A typical scientific paper has never pretended to be more than another little piece in a larger jigsaw—not significant in itself, but an element in a grander scheme. This technique, of soliciting many modest contributions to the store of human knowledge, has been the secret of Western science since the seventeenth century, for it achieves a corporate, collective power that is far greater than any one individual can exert.”
Thomas, ever the biologist, goes on to compare the collective effort of scientists to the collective effort of termites building a nest. And indeed, if you’re okay with being compared to translucent-brown grubby insects, that’s an apt comparison. For this is how the scientific enterprise moves forward: incrementally with millions and millions of individual papers (and now, in the age of big data, individual genetic sequences, chemical structures, geological maps, or other data points). But, especially early on in your research career, it’s important to remember that, however wonderful the collective efforts of termites are, research is much more than that.
Continue reading Scientists aren’t termites: New thoughts on meaningful research
The basement of the Lewis Library Fine Hall Wing is quiet.
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.
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.
Continue reading I went to the senior thesis archives. Here’s what I found.
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.
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.
Continue reading The Eternal Struggle Between Academics and Extracurriculars
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.
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:
Continue reading 4.5 Things to Remind Yourself Before Your Second JP
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!)
Continue reading Senior Reflection: What I Wish I Knew During My Spring JP
