Moving Forward by Looking Back: Revisiting Old Posters, Papers, and Texts

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A couple of the posters that hang outside the lab.

Deep in the darkest depths of the E-quad, there is a lab I go to—a lab where I run all my optics experiments, run tests with the breath analyzer instrument I work with, and that I have come to know and love during the past year. The entrance to the lab actually includes a space for presentation posters, which show off the work of graduate students and past interns. Usually I’m in a rush to get in or out and don’t spare these posters a second glance. But last week, for some reason or another (perhaps because I was feeling less stressed than usual), I decided to take some time to  look at them.

When I did, I was surprised. What had seemed to me before like a mass of incomprehensible jargon and tangle of convoluted science was now something more tangible—here were key words I had encountered over and over again throughout the past year, concepts I had heard about many times in group meetings. Even within a mix of phrases that were still not so familiar to me, I could at least grasp what the projects were about and start to see what was so relevant and interesting about these projects. I even found the work that described the novel technology behind the breath analyzer instrument I currently work on, and I felt good being able to understand that poster in its entirety.

It’s kind of strange. Even though I had looked at these posters before, that was back when I had first joined the lab, more than a year ago. Continue reading Moving Forward by Looking Back: Revisiting Old Posters, Papers, and Texts

Realizing the Global Impact of Princeton Professors

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The work of Princeton professors is recognized around the world! (slide credit: Bahador Bahrami. photo credit: Jalisha Braxton)
The work of Princeton professors is recognized around the world! (slide credit: Bahador Bahrami)

Something incredible happened the other day in class here at University College London (UCL). My psychology professor was lecturing on the topic of attention and awareness when, suddenly, a familiar name appeared on the screen: Matthew Botvinick, Professor of Psychology at Princeton University! I was struck with surprise, amazement, and joy at seeing his name on the board, feeling fortunate to have taken a neuroscience course with him the year before. A sense of pride washed over me as my European classmates & I learned about one of Professor Botvinick’s experimental studies on conflict monitoring. However, I also felt a wave of regret. Why had I not known about this study before? Shouldn’t I, a student in the Psychology Department at Princeton, know about the amazing research that my professor had conducted?

Most students at Princeton are well aware of the fact that the school’s faculty members are highly accomplished. However, while the merits of some professors are published by CNN on a daily basis, the accomplishments of other professors are less publicized. Nonetheless, many of the individuals who stand before us each and every day have and continue to produce incredible research that is highly regarded around the world.

Continue reading Realizing the Global Impact of Princeton Professors

Asking for Help: A Question of Foolish Pride?

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While pride might not necessarily cause us to build lavish palaces as some of our ancestors did, it could have other not-so-subtle effects on our daily lives.

“What did you do?”

Ever since I decided to reach out my audacious hand and tweak a couple things with the breath analyzer system for my research project, I dreaded hearing this question from my graduate student mentor. The tweaking had started as a simple desire to become more proactive in solving problems, but, as we know from tales like this, it did not end quite as I would have liked.

Despite having worked in my current lab for nearly two years, I still often feel like there are more things than ever that I don’t know how to do, more problems that I don’t know how to solve. As I’ve previously posted, I’ve been fighting a constant uphill struggle to get over my aversion to asking for help since coming to Princeton. Although I’ve become aware of it, I’ve recently realized there’s another factor that can get in the way of trying to rectify my aversion to asking for help: hanging onto what is often just foolish pride.

One day a couple weeks ago, I spotted some odd behavior with the breath analyzer system I currently work with for my independent work project. I wasn’t exactly sure what was wrong with it, but I had asked for help so many times before that it was starting to feel like too many times. Besides, we had done the procedure several times before. So I decided it was worth it to try fixing it by myself. Continue reading Asking for Help: A Question of Foolish Pride?

“Transferable Skills” – The Answer We’ve All Been Waiting For

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Whether you consider yourself a scholar or more of an artist, transferrable skills can help you achieve your dreams! (Photo of Antoni Gaudi's "Casa Batllo" in Barcelona, Spain. Photo credit: Jalisha Braxton)
Whether you consider yourself a scholar or more of an artist, transferable skills can help you achieve your dreams! (Photo of Antoni Gaudi’s “Casa Batllo” in Barcelona, Spain.)

As students, we frequently ask a particular question regarding our coursework: “How is this going to help me in the future?” While sometimes posed sarcastically, with a hint of disdain for whoever invented subjects like Calculus, our intention behind asking this question has always been to elicit a meaningful response that proves our coursework worthwhile. For some individuals who plan to go into academia after undergrad (myself being included), the correlation between our current coursework and our future occupation is highly apparent: writing literature reviews and research proposals now will help us write better ones in the future. No brainer. But what about the individuals who plan to work outside of an academic setting?

Interestingly enough, I recently discovered that many students at British universities receive a document from each professor listing the indispensable life skills they’ll develop through the completion of their coursework. These skills, referred to as “transferable skills”* for their usefulness in just about every occupation, encompass everything from thinking critically and negotiating to managing resources and communicating globally. This listing of skills not only seems beneficial for individuals looking to beef up their resume, but also for anyone trying to find purpose in their academic work. Continue reading “Transferable Skills” – The Answer We’ve All Been Waiting For

Don’t Be Afraid To Try Something Old

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As you might remember from my first PCUR post, it can be incredibly rewarding to pursue research outside your comfort zone.  If your time at Princeton doesn’t include at least one “just because” class, then you’re missing a few important experiences: first, the chance to expand your intellectual horizons; and second, the ability to navigate diverse styles of independent work.  I’ve consciously tried to apply this idea by taking one class in a new department every semester.  Yet after shopping six classes this spring, I settled on courses in History, African American studies, Politics, and the Woodrow Wilson School – four departments I’ve definitely been a student in before.

Yeah, I *have* seen those quotes a lot. That doesn't mean I'm any less excited about living up to their challenge
Yeah, I *have* seen those quotes a lot. That doesn’t mean I’m any less excited about living up to their challenge.

What happened? Well, it’s somewhat obvious: I chose the classes I expected to enjoy.  It didn’t hurt that they were all related to, or required by, my major and certificate interests. It also didn’t hurt to read their syllabi and recognize texts and ideas from previous classes.  In short, I felt comfortable with my schedule at the end of add/drop period… and it was a strange feeling.  As Princeton students, we have access to so many amazing opportunities that it seems wrong to get comfortable in particular academic areas, rather than challenge ourselves in other ways.

I missed something important, though, by framing a conflict between comfortable and challenging classes: there’s no dichotomy between the two. Continue reading Don’t Be Afraid To Try Something Old

Tackling our Academic Biases

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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

A Global Look at Educating Researchers

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The curriculum differences between UCL and Princeton can almost be as stark as the contrast between night and day (photo credit: Jalisha Braxton)
The curriculum differences between UCL and Princeton can almost be as stark as the contrast between night and day. (In photo: UCL’s main campus building [top] and Princeton’s Nassau Hall [bottom])
A common question I’ve gotten since coming to the UK to study is “what differences have you seen between classes in the UK and classes back home?” I’ve given some thought to this question and have decided to map out some of the various differences I’ve noticed between the curriculum design and expectations for upper level Psychology classes at Princeton vs. at University College London (UCL).  Each system presents different strengths in developing student researchers.

Lectures & Course Readings

Princeton: Many of my Psychology courses at Princeton were structured around a pre-assigned textbook. This practice helped with giving the course an understandable and predictable composition, with each lecture matching up closely with the units of the assigned reading material. Although professors generally provided supplementary information not found in the textbook, common themes and key elements of the course could be identified through the textbook readings.

UCL: Every lecture I have attended thus far at UCL has been heavily based in current research literature. The assigned readings are the research articles themselves. In the lecture, the professor typically picks a topic related to the course, then discusses current research on the topic, emphasizing both the merits and shortcomings of various studies. It is then discussed how the studies interact with one another, showcasing how newer studies are able to strengthen or disprove claims made by previous studies through replicating or altering experimental designs. Continue reading A Global Look at Educating Researchers

The Power of Fresh Perspectives

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It often becomes clearer when you change your perspective…

As winter break rolled in, I finally had the opportunity to focus on my thesis and make substantial progress. However, as always, it wasn’t going to be easy.

Generally speaking, the problem sets assigned in class have a solution.  You know that if you focus and spend time on them, it is (at least in theory) possible to come to the correct answer and complete the problem set. The challenge with research, however, is the very real possibility that the ultimate solution is unattainable with the methods/data that you have available to you.

It was precisely this problem that I encountered over the winter. Continue reading The Power of Fresh Perspectives

Engineering a New Outlook: The BSE Path

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Deciding to bear the mantle bestowed by the Electrical Engineering T-shirt.

Last week, Melissa told us about her ruminations on and approaches to deciding a major. This week, I wanted to offer some of my own thoughts and reflections on why I chose to stick to the path to BSE two years ago.

To many people, engineering seems to be the hard way through college. Engineering classes notoriously lower GPAs, cause intense stress, and work you to the bone. I can’t deny I’ve had a generous share of that, as someone who’s far from the sharpest mind in electrical engineering. Sometimes it can really take a hit on my self-esteem—and it’s no lie that I’ve experienced first hand how engineering classes make you work at your limits, force you to think differently, and labor at solving problems that don’t have set answers. But that’s because the end goal is to make a coherent working system that will perform a task, which is often immensely complex, while working within physically possible limits. In other words, rather than only thinking and planning, the result is something that really works and that can interact with society in some meaningful way. And successfully creating such a system is a very satisfying feeling indeed.

The difficulty people associate with engineering often clouds that end goal.While it’s true that engineering certainly isn’t for everyone, engineering offers you a different outlook and approach to life that can benefit you far beyond the academic field. Continue reading Engineering a New Outlook: The BSE Path

Student Profile: Alexandria Herr, 2017!

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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!