Covering tips and tricks from topic sentences to citations.
There’s no denying it: It’s hard to escape the “Orange Bubble.” With so much to do on campus, it’s hard to think of reasons to leave our little insulated community. But the deeper I venture into my thesis (due May 2; the coveted Post Thesis Life doesn’t exist for ELE majors), the more I realize how easy it is to get lost in long days of endless work —and how important it is to leave the Orange Bubble once in a while.
Continue reading Need to de-stress? Get off campus
Last week, Zoe wrote about research in the face of despair from external factors. How can you not push forward, she asked, when in your work is hope for a better future?
This week, I tackle inner despair: How can you push forward when in your work you see no hope?
My thesis project holds no immediate promise of hope for the reefs, or of curing some plague, or of fantastic future technology. The motivation for basic biochemical research comes from its intrinsic beauty, and the hope of applications long in the future. I was incredibly excited about my thesis project at the beginning – I was asking fundamental questions about the origin of life; I had the potential to create something genuinely new. Inevitably, though, my project hit obstacles – both technical problems and scientific difficulties indicating misconceptions in my original idea.
So, the thesis I’m currently writing looks nothing like the thesis I imagined last spring. Continue reading Pushing forward
With JP and thesis deadlines quickly approaching, many students have moved from the writing stage to what seems like a never-ending cycle of editing and revising. Editing and revising independent work (or any long paper) can be daunting, mainly because there’s a lot of content and there’s always some way to improve your writing. While there is no “perfection test” to let you know when your independent work is immaculate, here are some telltale signs that you should probably just hit submit: Continue reading Editing Independent Work: How to Know When You’re Done
In the thick of doing research, it’s easy to forget about the ultimate goal of writing and publishing. Thankfully, about once a month, the Princeton University Laser Sensing Lab holds what we call a “literature review”: Everyone brings in papers they’ve come across for their own research, and shares techniques that could be useful for the group at large.
At our last meeting, someone changed things up. Instead of bringing in a paper that contained interesting ideas, he brought one that he declared “the worst paper I’ve ever read”.
Continue reading Do’s and Don’ts for Research Writing
How would you like to travel to six of the country’s most famous National Parks for your senior thesis?
My friend Eve Barnett, a senior in the politics department, did just that. Eve, who also leads Outdoor Action trips and rock-climbs with the Princeton Climbing Team, found a way to combine her academic training with her love of the outdoors. Her thesis focuses on how the Park Service addresses a controversial issue within the climbing community: fixed anchors, metal bolts pushed into a cliff face for climbers to clip into. Should they be allowed in National Parks because they increase access, or banned because they’re a permanent change to the rock face? I sat down with Eve to learn more about her research journey.
How did you decide on a research topic? Was it related to your previous independent work?
It was totally unrelated! My fall JP was about international ocean conservation commissions, and my spring JP was about the different political experiences of high-income and low-income college students. I asked my thesis adviser what he thought about continuing with the college student project, but he recognized that it wasn’t really my project since it was a small portion of a professor’s ongoing research. He told me he believed my thesis topic should be something I have ownership of. So I started thinking, what do I love?
Continue reading Rocky trails: Researching what matters to you
Over the course of the semester, PCURs will reflect on the professors, advisers, and friends who shaped their research experiences. We present these to you as a series called Mentorship in Research. Most undergraduates have met, or will meet, an individual who motivates and supports their independent work. Here, Stacey shares her story.
~~~~~~
I really didn’t want to stay for the awards ceremony at the science fair that day, but Mrs. Sabherwal insisted. I told her I had to go to my clarinet lessons. No luck. I asked my mom to plead my case. No luck. She only offered, “It’s okay if you miss your lessons today”—and so, defeated, I waited at the fair.
And what an arduous wait it was. I couldn’t sit still—I just wanted to leave, and I was starting to get hungry. They kept calling names and more names. Names and more names. Were they done yet? I left and used the bathroom. But there was a flurry as I emerged, hands still damp with residual sink water—come quick, they told me, they’re calling your name! The highest award in the district science fair! Impossible. It turns out that Mrs. Sabherwal had confided in my mom about the award and expressly requested that I remain.
Mrs. Sabherwal was like that—always looking out for her students, no matter how frustratingly obstinate. She pushed me to become a researcher even when I didn’t realize I could be one. Continue reading Mentorship in Research: Don’t go alone!
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”
In an ideal world, research is pretty straightforward. Evidence is collected, synthesized, and analyzed. Meaning emerges. Results point to objective truth.
But if there’s anything I’ve learned from the first two weeks of ANT 301 (The Ethnographer’s Craft), it’s that research is often far from this ideal. Ethnography, at its core, is a subjective science. But that does not discount its intellectual value.
We recently read Harry G. West’s Ethnographic Sorcery, an account of West’s research in Mueda, Mozambique, where he studied sorcery as a prominent belief system. In short, Muedans believe that there are sorcerers among them who turn into lions and claim innocent lives. Early in the book, West recounts a conference he held to bounce his ideas off of community members. There, he presented a theory: we may understand these lion-people as metaphors for power play in society. An awkward hush took over the room before a schoolteacher spoke up. “I think you misunderstand,” he said. “These lions that you talk about … they aren’t symbols — they’re real.”
The case of the lion-people as metaphors reveals a problem of subjectivity: interpretations are often based on vastly distinct epistemologies, or ways of understanding the world. West acknowledges that calling lion-people metaphors is a fallacy because it dismisses local belief systems. In other words, viewing aspects of other cultures as metaphors rather than truth is a way of holding Western values above others.
Continue reading Sorcery or Science? The Value of Subjective Research
Pinpoint a research question. Develop a clear thesis. Support that thesis with foolproof evidence. Discredit any rebuttals.
This is how many of us approach research papers — because ever since elementary school, teachers have told us to pick an argument and stand by it. I have completed assignment after assignment using this strategy, but recently I had the opportunity to break out of the single-argument box and experience a new writing technique.
For my French class last semester, I had to write a final paper about a current event of my choosing in the style of a typical French essay. My professor explained that in France, academic writing commonly diverges from the structure I described above. Students are encouraged to report on current events by investigating all of the different perspectives, components, and opinions at hand. Instead of crafting a specific argument to articulate and support, students offer thorough descriptions of multiple perspectives, the reasoning behind them, and their sources. As the paper develops, the writer must depict the similarities and differences of each perspective and describe how they interact to affect each other and to shape the greater context.
Continue reading Challenging the “Proper” Way to Write a Research Essay
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.
