How to Prepare for an In-Class Zoom Presentation

Posted on by Saira Reyes

Presenting on Zoom can be difficult, as you must now learn how to keep a virtual audience engaged. Last spring semester, after returning home due to COVID-19, I had to quickly learn how to make this transition, as I was enrolled in CBE346: Chemical Engineering Laboratory (core lab). This course was laboratory based, and it consisted of 4 different lab rotations, after which all students had to complete a written report and a presentation. Due to the pandemic, 3 of those were completed over Zoom. 

In this post, I will give tips on how to prepare for a Zoom presentation, using the insights I gained from my core lab presentations.

Screenshot of the recorded video of my core lab presentation.
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Through Thick and Thin: Going over PSETs during Remote Learning

Posted on by Kamron Soldozy

Getting PSETs done over Zoom can be a combination of awkward and challenging. To assist with that task, fellow PCUR Correspondent Ryan Champeau recently wrote a post with suggestions for working on PSETs in the age of remote learning. A great tip in that article is to collaborate with friends when permitted under a course’s collaboration policy. However, given that students can’t meet in person to work on assignments anymore, I’ve found the process of checking over PSETs to be a bit more difficult than usual.

Specifically, I’m taking QCB 455, an introductory course to quantitative and computational biology in which there are four total problem sets. As a neuroscience major in a class filled with computer science majors and some graduate students, I didn’t really know many people in the course. Going over the first PSET with people I didn’t know over Zoom felt a bit strange, but I’ve since found that there are actually a few benefits to going over PSETs that are specific to the remote experience. In this post, I’ll go over the three strategies I’ve started to use when collaborating on PSETs for my classes:

Photo by Max. G.
One of my favorite places to get PSETs done back when students were on campus – the couch at the heart of Murray-Dodge Café.
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Tips on Preparing a Research Funding Proposal

Posted on by Israeli Alec

At Princeton, we are fortunate to have pretty much unrestricted access to a huge variety of research resources through our libraries– access which is free (or, at least, “free” after tuition…). However, as I have written before on this blog (see here and here), there may be situations where Princeton’s library system does not have the information you need for your research, and you have to venture outward to other libraries and archives, or, in some cases, engage in field work of some kind. Now, access to these resources, unfortunately may not be free. Usually the biggest expense here would be travel, but even given our current no-travel circumstances, research expenses remain in the form of document scans, books, photocopies, and human subject payment (all of which are acceptable uses of funding from the Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR) as of now).

If you relate to this concerned student, have no fear– research funding is accessible with a well-done research proposal!
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Turning a Laboratory-Based Research Proposal into a Remote Project

Posted on by Saira Reyes

Last spring semester, I was completing my junior independent work in a bioengineering lab on campus. My project was lab-heavy, as I was investigating the extent of DNA damage (measured as type and frequency of breaks occurring in the DNA) that occurs in persister subpopulations (cell populations with non-inherited tolerance to antibiotics) of E.Coli cells when treated with antibiotics and other DNA damaging agents. I had prepared a series of experiments to test these conditions, most of which would be performed after returning from spring break. However, those plans changed in March, when students were sent home due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


Like many other lab researchers, I was left with incomplete experiments and an upcoming deadline to present my work. Independent research for the chemical and biological engineering (CBE ) department is only one semester long, and I spent most of the first half of the semester doing literature review, planning experiments and learning lab techniques. With only eight weeks left before my final paper and presentation deadline, I worried about the possibility of having to change my entire research topic into something that could be completed remotely. However, along with the lead researcher of the lab, or principal investigator (PI), and graduate student mentor, we developed a plan to easily transition the project I had already been working on into a remote project. In this post, I will give tips on how to conduct laboratory research remotely.

Conducting laboratory-heavy research remotely can be challenging. However, due to the collaborative nature of research, a laboratory project can successfully be modified to be conducted remotely.
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A Freshman’s Guide to Writing a Research Policy Memo

Posted on by Abhimanyu Banerjee

The freshman seminars are one of the unique experiences at Princeton. While they may seem intimidating at first, they made me think of the process of research in my very first year in college. Not everyone might become a full-time researcher – I, for example, want to become a policy analyst – but many of our jobs will involve research, and the structure of the freshman seminar is very conducive to the research process. In the Economics of Immigration seminar that I took with Professor Leah Boustan during Fall 2019, we discussed aspects of the economic effects of immigration both on the receiving country and on the migrants themselves. Our final deliverable was a research policy memo – a document that describes a policy intervention by the government, by first arguing the need for it, then describing its advantages, and finally proposing a way by which it might be implemented. In order to write an effective memo, I had to research an issue that necessitated looking at it from diverse points of view. The process made me appreciate several principles of writing a policy memo.

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4 Tips to Organize Your Lost Folders and Misplaced Files

Posted on by Austin Davis

While I was working to finalize my research this summer, I realized something: I couldn’t find one of my sources central to my argument. Pouring through my various folders on my computer, I could not find this source. Between Excel sheets with undescriptive names and misplaced images, it wasn’t just that my source was missing; I lacked an entirely well-formulated, well-maintained organizational structure to keep track of my work.

If anything, organization should be easier in the digital space. Besides bytes, we’re not necessarily concerned with finding the space to store our papers, books, and other materials; in fact, we can create folders upon folders, meticulously grouping related works together to keep track of them.

But this is the trap. While I’ll see the mess before me on my desk, I don’t necessarily see that all of my folders are disorganized until I need to find something. I don’t see that I stored images for my essay on my Google Drive rather than in that class’s folder. In my experience, computer storage may facilitate organization, but it also hides potential messes from you until you need to find that one file for your assignment or research. And even if you’re the type of person where all of your work is spilled out onto your home screen, sifting through the documents at times is surely a nightmare.

So, I wanted to outline some of the steps that I’ve taken this school year to make sure that everything remains organized in this weird digital setting:

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Princeton Problem Sets at Home: A Guide to Success on PSETs

Posted on by Ryan Champeau

Although we can’t go to McGraw in-person this semester, we can still collaborate with our peers at McGraw online.

There comes a time for many Princeton students when they are assigned their first PSET, or problem set. “How will I learn all of this in a week? What are the teachers looking for in the answers? How will I collaborate with others when I’m not even on campus?” These are thoughts that many Princeton students have when any PSET is distributed, especially with the semester being online. Believe me, I have been there too, and I would love to share some PSET tips and tricks to help you do your best!

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Time Management Tips for Navigating Zoom University

Posted on by Kamron Soldozy

Oh, it’s unfortunate that your classes are all online now… But all the extra free time must be nice, right?

Actually, no. Somehow, I have ended up in a place where I’m busier than I was back when school was offline. And that’s without Powerlifting Team practices, the thirty-minute dinners that consistently turned into three-hour-long social gatherings, and all of the hours I spent working on-campus jobs.

I’ve realized it has to do with my relationship with time. In the past, I didn’t need to be very intentional with my free time: it always just happened. Nowadays I think back fondly to my naïve visits to the Rocky Common Room for pre-bedtime cereal-breaks, only to end up practicing handstands on the rug by the piano with my friends until 2 am. 

Without spontaneous social interaction, I ended up filling up all of my time with work, clubs, projects, and research. Unfortunately for first-year students, these challenges are only compounded by the transition to college academics in general. Whether or not you feel like you’re busier this semester, I believe we can all benefit from evaluating how we make time for ourselves: below are five tips I’ve implemented to help facilitate a productive and sustainable semester this fall.

As an extension of last Spring, Princeton classes are once again remote for the Fall of 2020-2021.
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Archival Research in the Age of COVID-19: Requesting Document Scans from Libraries

Posted on by Israeli Alec

When I first applied for departmental senior thesis funding early this spring, everyone was still uncertain about how long the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic would last. It seemed departmental administrators were optimistic: funding requests could still be made for summer travel. In my application, I detailed my intent to travel to university and state archives throughout the U.S. south for a thesis examining how antebellum Mississippi Valley planters conceptualized the idea of labor. But before I even heard back about whether I was to receive support, the department updated its funding parameters to prohibit summer travel and I had to redo my application in turn. My summer plans, of course, were not the first academic casualty of the strange 2020 world; nor would they be the last. Fortunately, though, there were ways to work around my newfound limitations: all of the archives that I wanted to visit offered services for resident librarians to scan and send materials from their collection, so I updated my application to ask for funds to pay for associated fees. Here, I’ll be sharing some tips for requesting archival materials to be scanned, which I hope will be helpful to any researcher unable to travel (pandemic or not).

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Kicking Off The New Academic Year

Posted on by Nanako Shirai

Welcome back to the 2020-2021 academic year, which will be unlike any school year that we’ve had before. While it has been and remains a tumultuous time, I personally hope that going to classes (even remotely) will help bring a sense of normalcy back into our lives. What will hopefully aid in the process is PCUR, which will be up and running as always! Our correspondents from across grade levels and academic disciplines will reflect on what it is like to be a remote college student, and share tips and advice that they learn throughout the year.

This year, we have three new correspondents: Abhimanyu, Austin, and Ryan! We are excited for them to join the current crew of correspondents, which include Kamron, Alex, and Saira.

Abhimanyu Banerjee ’23 – Social Sciences Correspondent

Concentration: Economics

Degree Program: A.B.

Research Interests: Monetary policy, fiscal policy, income inequality, financial bubbles, sustainability

Bio: I am a sophomore from Gainesville, Florida. I am interested in economic policy, particularly how it can be used to tackle such issues as alleviating recessions, reducing inequality, and promoting sustainability. I am also a researcher for the Policy Punchline podcast here on campus. In my free time, I am an avid chess player and have played competitively for over a decade.

Austin Davis ’23 – Humanities Correspondent

Concentration: Undecided

Degree Program: A.B.

Research Interests: History, historical memory, urban studies, post-1900 United States, social stratification and structures, and post-1400 Europe.

Bio: I am a sophomore from Pittsburgh, PA. Even though I am undecided, I plan on concentrating in History most likely. One of my interests that has especially emerged at Princeton is the intersection of urban studies and historical memory. Outside of school and research, I am the USG Historian, a Peer Academic Advisor for Forbes College, and a PAI Community Ambassador.

Ryan Champeau ’23 – Social Sciences Correspondent

Concentration: Princeton School of Public Policy and International Affairs

Degree Program: A.B.

Certificate Programs: Program in French Language and Culture, Cognitive Science, Creative Writing

Research Interests: Psychology, Social Media, Public Policy, History

Bio: I’m a sophomore from New Jersey who likes dogs, writing, and photography! I’m interested in exploring how I can use research to have a positive impact on the Princeton community and beyond. On campus, I’m a big sister for the Big Brothers Big Sisters program, player and social chair for the club ultimate frisbee team, member of the Whitman College Council, and Community Action leader. I’m also really enthusiastic and love to rap!

We’re looking forward to a great year, even with everything that is going on. Please stay safe, and if you have any specific questions or topics that you would like to see us write about, submit them here!

⎯ Nanako Shirai, Chief Correspondent

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