There are many opportunities to apply for funding!
If you are an upperclassman, at this point in the semester, you’ve probably met with your adviser, decided on your research topic, and come up with a game plan for beginning your independent work. That said, you may still need to figure out one final detail: getting research funding. Not only does the Student Activities Funding Engine (SAFE) now have several applications open for Winter and Intersession research, but applications for spring funding will also be opening relatively soon. Even if you aren’t in the midst of writing a thesis, SAFE also lists opportunities for students who need funding for internships, summer study abroad programs, and independent projects. If this is your first time applying for funding and you’re worried about writing a convincing proposal, you’re not the only one. That’s why PCUR attended the Writing Program’s “Crafting Your Research Proposal” workshop to bring back some pointers. If you weren’t able to make it, here are the fundamental guiding questions to help make your research statement as clear and effective as possible:Continue reading Need Funding? Tips for Writing a Convincing Proposal
At least once a week, without fail, I will stop in the middle of the p-set I am working on, or the paper I am writing, and think “what is the point of this?” Sure, the pursuit of knowledge may be a reward unto itself, but I don’t want my academic goals to be purely selfish–I want my course work at Princeton to benefit others. To this end, I have sought engaging research-based courses that can have a positive impact on people’s lives. These classes combine my academic interests with my desire for meaning, and provide a concrete ‘point’ to my course work.
Sure, the pursuit of knowledge may be a reward unto itself, but I don’t want my academic goals to be purely selfish–I want my course work at Princeton to benefit others.
Last Spring, I participated in GEO 360, Geochemistry of the Human Environment, a course focused on providing chemical analyses of tap-water, paint, and soil for low-income residents of Trenton, NJ. Only 11 miles south of our orange-bubble along the towpath, Trenton is one of the poorest cities in the state and has a serious and systemic lead problem. Lead exposure is caused by the deterioration of lead paint into dust and the leaching of lead from pipes into drinking water. While lead paint was banned in 1978 and installation of lead piping was discontinued in the mid 1980’s, lead is still ubiquitous in Trenton where 90% of homes and buildings were constructed prior to 1978. As homes in the city age, the lead within them becomes mobilized and hazardous, and residents often do not have the financial means to keep their homes safe.
This map shows our measurements of lead concentration in parts-per-billion for water samples from homes around the city. Although most homes do not have high water-lead concentrations, there is no ‘safe’ amount of lead. (Map grid is UTM N zone 18)
Our class worked alongside Isles, a non-profit Trenton organization that has tested over 2,000 homes for lead and provided remediation work–all free of charge–over the past three decades. We assisted Isles with field work by collecting samples, and measuring paint and soil lead in urban residences. We then analyzed hundreds of tap-water samples, measuring elemental concentrations with a mass spectrometer and conducting multivariate analyses to quantify the correlations between metals within samples. Our work helped Isles identify at-risk homes in order to provide them with lead paint remediation and/or water filters.
I surprised my inner procrastinator this week and thought about my final essay for my junior seminar a week and a half before midterms. I had written about an interesting theme in my Blackboard response, and thought in passing that it could make a good topic for an extended essay. I didn’t take this thought too seriously at first, because with finals being months away, I didn’t want to add any extra stress overthinking
Don’t be alarmed! You don’t have to have your final essay together now, but even giving it a passing thought early on is helpful.
everything. But then I realized that thinking long-term about finals, even casually, could actually make Dean’s Date a lot less stressful. I then made a mental note of this potential essay topic and planned on consistently revisiting it as I progressed through the course.
Several difficulties come with courses that have final papers. Some prompts are open-ended, leaving you to find a relevant and interesting research topic related to the course with little guidance. Others are more specific, requiring you to tailor a semester’s worth of information and synthesize it into a Continue reading January Already? How to Begin Preparing for a Final Essay WAY in Advance
At Princeton, ‘finding your way’ can seem as daunting as escaping the Labyrinth. Even when things are going well, I find myself asking thinks like: What are the best courses to take next semester? What should I do next summer? What should I do with my life?
Developing a relationship with a mentor can be one of the most personally rewarding aspects of academic life at Princeton.
Questions like these don’t have easy answers, and as best as I can tell, we shouldn’t expect to wake up one day with everything figured out. But chipping away at these questions is important, and I’ve found it much easier to do so with some guidance. Where do we get guidance, though?
Enter the mentor. The mentor is your wiser half, your sensei—the person who guides you through this mysterious world with sage advice and unflagging support.
What I’m most passionate about is immigration. How do people move? Why do they move? And what can we do to assist immigrant communities? While I’m not an immigrant myself, I’m the child of Chinese immigrants who came at a time when Chinese immigration was almost entirely restricted on a racial basis. When my grandparents came to America, only 105 Chinese immigrants per year were permitted entry into the United States. While I acknowledge that I speak from a position of natural-born citizenship, it is the struggles of modern undocumented immigrants that truly fuel my desire to research this field of policy.
The author’s grandfather came to America on this ship in 1949.
At the start of this school year, in a frenzy of self-improvement, I deleted all of my dating apps.
The ReMatch Meet and Greet I attended at CAF
To be honest, I didn’t think I would write about my relationship quandaries on this blog. But weirdly enough, they’ve actually started to help me understand my research experiences. Just keep reading…
By the end of Week 1, I had downloaded all of the apps again and even organized them into a folder on my phone automatically titled “Social.” For all of the (very real) criticisms of this industry, there really is something so satisfying about getting that match notification on your lock screen. We all have days when rejection and loneliness cloud our vision, and it can feel weirdly reassuring to know that a stranger is interested in getting to know you. Continue reading First-Years & Sophomores: How to Find Your (Re)Match
I have never liked open-ended projects. The ones that ask you to “pick one concept and explore it” or “pick something that interests you and expand on it” always overwhelm me. How can I pick just one thing to focus on from a semester-long course that I took for the explicit reason that I was interested in all of the subject matter?
Determining the most effective study strategy is on many students’ minds with exams approaching
Last spring, I was faced with one of these final projects in my cognitive psychology course. We were asked to pick one of the central concepts in cognitive psychology, identify a question and hypothesis related to it, and design an experiment to test it. The first thing I did was read over my notes from the semester to try to find something I was particularly interested in but…plot twist…I was interested in pretty much everything, so I needed to come up with a different strategy.
I decided to reverse engineer my search for a topic. What is a question I want to answer? What would I be interested in learning about right now? What is relevant to me at this moment? Well, at the time we were coming up on finals season, so naturally studying was all I could think about. How could I most efficiently study for all of my upcoming exams? Luckily, learning and memory are fundamental concepts in cognitive psychology so I was on my way to developing a successful, interesting, and relevant project. A project that not only appropriately connected to the material in the course, but one that I could apply to my day to day life.Continue reading Learning how to Learn: Making Research Relevant
A continuation of my last post, in which I describe my experience starting to work as a research assistant at a Chemical and Biological Engineering lab here at Princeton. My work began in 10th grade and ended early this year.
Several months in, I felt like I was finally getting my footing. I had expanded my knowledge enough that I could understand, and make meaningful contributions to, the research project. I was working on computationally modeling the 3D structure of one of the protein receptors that HIV-1 uses to infect human cells. This receptor can bind either to HIV-1 or to other proteins (ligands), and when these ligands are bound to the receptor, they block the entry of HIV-1. By modeling these structures, we hoped to design a synthetic protein that could block HIV-1 infection by binding to the receptor.
A closeup of some of the sidechains of the protein structure for a receptor and ligand.
A few days after I returned home for the rest of the summer, I opened up an email from my post-doc supervisor and felt my heart skip a beat.
“Please write the introduction for our paper on modeling the structures of HIV-blocking proteins over the next two weeks.”
Kristin Hauge ’18, Music Major with Certificates in Musical Performance and Teacher Prep
Kristin Hauge is a senior from Westfield, New Jersey majoring in Music while pursuing certificates in Musical Performance (Piano) and Teacher Preparation. Not only does she participate in a number of ensembles on campus (e.g. Princeton Pianists Ensemble, Sinfonia, and Glee Club), she also has been composing music since high school. And instead of your traditional research paper, Kristin composed an entire composition for her independent work her junior year. If you’re used to conducting studies in the social sciences like me, you’re probably wondering what research is like as a music major. Thankfully, Kristin took some time away from her numerous rehearsals to answer a few questions:Continue reading Independent Work in the Music Department: An Interview with Kristin Hauge
Last February I wrote a post about reconciling my love for STEM with my humanities major. The summer before my junior year, I made a compromise with myself: take at least one quantitative course a semester. I thought this to be the most realistic plan to stay on track with my French major while keeping a promise to cultivate my inner Neil DeGrasse Tyson. I’m kicking off this plan with taking Intro to Data Science this fall.
RStudio and French literature get along better than I thought!
This compromise is useful on an academic level, given my new interest in Digital Humanities, a field that combines both humanities and technology. I am hoping to prime my quantitative side to explore this field, potentially for my senior thesis.
