The Chain Bridge spans the Danube River, connecting the Buda and Pest sides of the city.
Hello (Szia) from Budapest, Hungary! In a few days, I will start my internship with the European Roma Rights Centre, where I will be working with the legal team and doing research on anti-Roma discrimination. But for now, I am busy exploring the city and getting acclimated to my temporary home. As I wrote in April (and as Princeton’s IIP program suggested), interning abroad can be thought of as a comprehensive research experience — a time to collect “data” on our surrounding environments. Fellow PCUR blogger Vidushi gave similar advice during her study abroad experience in New Zealand, where she talked about taking courses relevant to New Zealand culture. Following everyone’s “immerse-yourself-in-the-culture” suggestion, I used my first few days in Budapest to do some informal “research” on the city. Continue reading Stage 1 of my Summer Internship Abroad: Exploring Budapest’s Present and Past
This is Space Mountain, an indoor roller coaster at Disney World. The ride is basically in complete darkness — so those twists and turns reeeeally blur together.
The 2015-2016 school year is finally over, and it’s been quite a ride. You might even call it a roller coaster. Think about it: The year had highs. It had lows. It probably had loops where you weren’t sure what was going on. But you were buckled up for the long haul, and you finished with an excited smile (and/or a sigh of relief). The whole thing was so dizzyingly fast that, in retrospect, all its twists and turns seem like one indistinguishable blur.
PCUR was on that roller coaster with you. We also see the past eight months as kind of a blur. But, we wrote about the twists and turns of research as they were happening – creating a lasting record of our paths, and how they intersect with yours.
You’ll remember feeling like we did in key moments throughout the year:
Posts like these remind us how research can be frustrating and confusing, but also exciting and impactful. That’s a pretty neat summary of PCUR’s message. And, starting this summer, it’s no longer confined to the academic year. Because many undergraduates tackle research experiences during the summer, we’ve decided to post occasional updates from our summer internships, fieldwork, and research-related activities. There will be twists and turns, for sure – but there will also be written records of how we work through them.
We hope you’ll follow along with our first ever summer series. And, we hope it’s okay that summer posts will be less frequent than posts from the academic year. It’s only because we need some time to do fun vacation things, like go to amusement parks – and ride roller coasters.
— Melissa Parnagian, Chief Correspondent
(P.S. Best of luck to our graduating seniors Bennett, Jalisha, and Stacey. We can’t wait to hear about all the amazing things you’ll do!)
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, Zoe shares her story.
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Cleo and I liked this display at the turtle museum of Tortuguero National Park in Costa Rica.
The mentorship series asks us to examine the role of mentors in our lives as undergraduate researchers. Earlier this semester, Jalisha discussed the challenges and value of professors’ mentorship, and Emma reflected on peers as mentors. This post is an ode to the graduate student – actually, an ode to my favorite grad student, Cleo Chou.
I met Cleo the summer after my freshman year, when I was an intern through the Princeton Environmental Institute. Cleo’s Ph.D project is a field study of rainforest trees and how they respond to nutrient enrichment and limitation. This question has crucial implications for how we predict tropical rainforests’ responses to climate change.
I spent a month working with Cleo in Princeton, and then six weeks at her field site in Costa Rica, hiking through the rainforest and surveying the saplings in her study. Cleo and I were together 23 hours a day, every day, with my daily hour-long run our only substantial time apart. In the long hours of rainforest hiking, tree-finding, leaf-counting, and trunk-measuring, we talked about everything from our career aspirations to food to our families and friendships. Continue reading Mentorship in Research: An ode to the grad student (and one grad student in particular)
Although I was very excited to be done with finals, I was definitely not-so-thrilled about packing and storing my things before summer. After discovering that we lose access to our rooms two days earlier than expected, I’ve had to ‘prepone’ my packing plans (aka I realized that I needed to start packing early). So, in the midst of finals, I decided to take a study break and start cleaning out my desk so that I didn’t have to pull an all-nighter after my last final (which would be dreadfully ironic).
While going through my drawers I found something that I hadn’t actually seen since move-in day of freshman year: a hand-made lidden mini-basket. It took me a few seconds to remember how I had obtained it, but when it came to me, I felt a sudden pang of nostalgia.
The Rwandan hand-made basket that reminded me of an incredibly moving story I heard two summers ago.
From high school graduation to college graduation; these four years have flown by!
Last week, I received a message from a senior at my old high school. He told me that he is attending Princeton as member of the Class of 2020 — and words can’t explain how excited I am. Very few people from my small town end up going to schools in the Ivy League, so I felt a great sense of pride knowing that someone else would be “living the dream”! I decided to meet up with him and his mom to answer any questions they had about Princeton, especially in relation to our shared background as middle-class Americans from suburban Delaware. Meeting with the incoming freshman led me to do a lot of reflecting on my own Princeton experience.
At Reunions, you can always identify the alumni by the wacky orange and black jackets custom-designed for their class!
Back during exam period, when I unenthusiastically headed to the depths of Firestone for intense study sessions, I was motivated by a few exciting prospects. Most obviously, there was the idea of being done with exams and embarking on refreshing summer experiences. But for many Princeton students, the end of the school year also entails one of the University’s oldest and most eagerly awaited traditions: Reunions.
Reunions is a three-day period at the end of May when all Princeton alumni are invited back to campus for a weekend of fun events, celebration and socializing. Graduating seniors get to attend, as do many other undergraduates who are participating in or working at events. I have the opportunity to go this year because I’m performing at Reunions with Princeton University Ballet. (If you are interested in attending our show–which is free and open to the public–it will be in the Frist Film and Performance Theater at 6:00 pm on Saturday, May 28!) Continue reading Just When You Think the Year is Over, the Best is yet to Come
Seniors have been forcibly reminded of graduation by senior checkout, where we’ve had to pick up our cap and gown among a long list of other things.
I’ve handed in my thesis and my lab notebooks to my advisor. I’ve cleaned up the equipment I’ve piled in the corner of the methane sensor cabinet in the lab. I’ve explained my system, with all its lingering imperfections, to my group members. I’ve told them to give my lab screwdriver a new home.
That was how my time in the Princeton University Laser Sensing Lab came to a close. Graduation seems to be a time to celebrate all our successes, and to (already!) feel nostalgic for the good times we’ve had at Princeton. That’s natural. But after such a long and difficult journey, only remembering where I’ve gone right seems oddly one-sided. I wouldn’t be capturing some of the most important takeaways from Princeton if I only remembered the happy times.
I came to Princeton because I planned on being a research scientist, probably in academia. I knew what came next, and it was exciting: four years of undergrad, five years of PhD, and a two-year post-doc, so I could have a real job by the time I was 30. That meant I needed research experience, and boy oh boy did Princeton provide research experience.
Icahn, where my research journey at Princeton began
Research is about exploring the unknown, and from the beginning I did just that. As a student in the Integrated Sciences Curriculum (ISC), I had to learn MATLAB, LaTeX, ImageJ, JAVA, and countless other acronyms and jargon. And I had to learn them fast, using them to solve problems and write about them, in an ordeal I described as “drinking the nectar of Olympus—from a fire hose.”
Over the past few weeks, Princeton professor Johannes Haushofer has received a lot of attention for his CV of Failures, in which he chronicles his lack of success in various academic pursuits. Many have called Professor Haushofer’s CV inspiring — because most of us rarely hear about the trials and tribulations of acclaimed individuals.
We also rarely hear about the trials and tribulations of graduating seniors. Our default is to view graduating seniors as 100% successful in all their endeavors, especially those who receive prestigious awards and fellowships. I thought it would be great to sit down with some award-winning members of the class of 2016 to hear their thoughts on the topic of failure.
Big thanks to seniors Andrew Nelson, Jack Mazzulo, and Cameron Bell for contributing to this conversation. But the conversation around failure doesn’t have to stop here! Consider reaching out to RCA’s, Peer Advisors, and friends to have meaningful conversations about success and failure.
For AB Princeton sophomores, April 19, 2016 was (and still is) a date engraved in our brains. It marked the deadline for declaring our concentration. By extension, it also symbolized a major transition in our academic careers. April 19 signaled the end of days, weeks and even months of uncertainty mixed with internal debates and (many) last-minute mind changes. Theoretically, the passing of April 19 should have put us sophomores at ease. No more doubt and anxiety …right?
Still feel torn between two concentrations?
On the contrary, I personally have experienced some uncertainty since declaring my major (Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, also known as “Woody Woo”). Given that many of my friends have had similar feelings, I’ve decided to address two questions that my fellow not-so-anxiety-free sophomores might have post-concentration declaration.
