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

Senior Thesis Spotlight: Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Posted on by Stacey Huang

What would the world look like if you were a giant?

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Joseph Bolling ’15 (left) and Ankush Gola ’15 (right) with their project. (Image used with permission of Joseph Bolling and Ankush Gola)

For their senior thesis in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Joseph Bolling and Ankush Gola are creating a system to find  the answer to that question. In a way similar to how our brain stitches together two slightly offset images from each eye to create a 3D image, Bolling and Gola are using two quadcopters with mounted cameras to recreate the same effect on a much larger scale. Quadcopters, which are like helicopters but with four rotors instead of only one, have recently become popular among commercial and recreational drone operators.

“We want to not only enhance the user’s depth perception, but elevate their eyes,” said Gola.

Bolling and Gola drew inspiration for their project from a cartoon titled “Depth Perception” by the science comic XKCD, in which the character describes a way of using distantly spaced webcams to view clouds in his eyeglasses. In their system, Bolling and Gola plan to integrate the virtual reality headset Occulus Rift to allow users to view the world from any angle they wish, as if they were giants towering above. Aside from producing an interesting effect, the project could be especially helpful in surveying and modeling territory.

“The aerial perspective [of the quadcopter] lends itself very nicely to this type of visual effect,” explained Gola, “and quadcopter filming itself is becoming very popular, so we think will fit in well.” Continue reading Senior Thesis Spotlight: Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Things I Don’t Thesis Without

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This week’s post is a photographical account of the three main things I never really write my thesis without – the things getting me through the next month and a half, the things that are the only reasons I have any words on a page at all, etc.

A snack, and maybe a coffee: I’m not a huge caffeine person, but a small coffee and a banana usually does the trick when I need a small boost of energy after a long work period. Continue reading Things I Don’t Thesis Without

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

Page Limits: Balancing Quantity and Quality

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A different kind of page limit, but still relevant: the number of pages you write determines the number of sheets you print. (Photo by Melissa Parnagian)
A different kind of page limit, but still relevant: the number of pages you write determines the number of sheets you print.

At times, the phrase “between x and y pages” seems tedious or even unnecessary, but there’s something inherently different about 5-7 pages of research versus 12-15.  And if we recognize that difference, it means page limits serve a purpose.  Think about how you react at either extreme of a page range: when your paper hasn’t met the minimum requirements, it’s easy to tell that you need more research; conversely, passing the maximum is an indication to scale back.

But not every issue is so easy to resolve.  What about finishing just below the maximum?  On a recent policy paper, I found myself barely squeaking below the maximum page limit… or, more accurately, using shorter synonyms to avoid hitting page z on an x-to-y assignment.

That remedy didn’t last long.

Continue reading Page Limits: Balancing Quantity and Quality

Engineering a New Outlook: The BSE Path

Posted on by Stacey Huang

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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

GoPro: The Life of a Geologist

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Research is often stereotyped as a boring intellectual pursuit, or for people who say things like “If my calculations are correct…” every day. But it certainly isn’t! Research is exciting, and often performed outside of the lab. For example, I spent the last summer hiking in the North Cascades, WA to examine the rapid exhumation of a rock unit along a major fault zone. Here is a short video montage of that field season…

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g-Dss3ZhGw&spfreload=10

To learn more about what the geosciences can offer you, visit the department webpage, reach out to any of us in the department, or consider taking a class with us!

Up in the clouds (Photo by Sean Muleady '17)
Up in the clouds…

— Yuem Park, Natural Sciences Correspondent

Finding Passion in Past Semesters

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My home away from home; University College London's central quad!
My home away from home; University College London’s central quad!

Hello from London, England! This semester, I’ve left the comforts of the Orange Bubble, traveling 3,500 miles to study at University College London (UCL). While my spring semester in London began a few weeks ago, I know that back at Princeton, the new term is just beginning!

The start of a new semester is always refreshing – it’s almost as if we’ve been given a blank slate, a chance to start anew. I typically spend little to no time thinking about the past semester once a new one has begun, feeling as though the completion of final assignments signals the abrupt end to all thoughts relating to a particular course. However, this semester differed from past semesters for me.  One particular Dean’s Date assignment stayed on my mind long after its submission and ended up impacting me in an unexpected way. Continue reading Finding Passion in Past Semesters