Last semester, Jalisha studied abroad in London and wrote about her experiences on the PCUR blog. Aside from finishing up papers and exams, I’m getting ready to head abroad myself — to the University of Otago in New Zealand! I wanted to share some tips on how to choose your study abroad location, and how to prepare for a semester of research away from Princeton (both of which add to Jalisha’s great advice).
Continue reading Getting Ready to Research Abroad!
On Tuesday, I turned in my JP, a 34-page labor of love that was half a year in the workings. And now some real talk: After that experience, writing Dean’s Date papers feels wrong.
My JP was, perhaps, my single biggest academic accomplishment at Princeton. Submitting it was the culmination of six months of work that began this summer in Juchitán de Zaragoza, a rural city in Oaxaca, Mexico. Juchitán, as I’ve written about before, is widely known for the indigenous Zapotec culture’s acceptance of a third gender option, muxe (pronounced “moo-shay”), and for the myth that it is a “matriarchal” society.
There, I conducted a series of in-depth interviews with activists and NGO workers, seeking to understand their work, how they define their communities, and what they believe to be the greatest issues facing women and LGBTQ+ people in the region. These interviews were the basis of my JP: ethnographic non-fiction, in which I told my story — the process of getting to know a culture so distant from my own — while telling others’.
Continue reading The Post-JP Slump: When Dean’s Date Feels Wrong
Over the course of the semester, PCURs will explain how they found their place in research. We present these to you as a series called The Project That Made Me a Researcher. As any undergraduate knows, the transition from ‘doing a research project’ to thinking of yourself as a researcher is an exciting and highly individualized phenomenon. Here, Bennett shares his story.
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This is hardly the conventional idea of a research project: for one thing, I don’t remember it, and it’s hardly a lab or an archive project. But, unlike the writing seminar paper I wrote on Osama bin Laden, or my first lab experience with yeast genetics, this is a project every PCUR reader has gone through. So here’s baby Bennett, to take you through the first and most exciting research project any of us has participated in: discovering the world as an infant.
1. Bury Yourself In The Literature
You can’t start a research project without a deep background on the question you’re asking in the first place. That’s pretty difficult for an illiterate baby: the best I could do was crawl into the papers in my Dad’s briefcase, and hope some knowledge rubbed off, or that I would at least get a better understanding of how the world around me was shaped. If you’re literate, then you’ve got a huge advantage: read everything you can (even if you don’t understand it all at first – we’ll get to that later).
Continue reading The Project That Made Me a Researcher: 8 Things Infancy Teaches Us About Research
Reading Period is probably one of the most unique times of the Princeton semester. Fall semester’s Reading Period is particularly special (or brutal, some people would say), because it comes after winter break and makes January one long month filled with studying and finals. But after four years of enduring the looks of pity and shock from friends and family, it’s somehow been growing on me. The prospect of having work over break is still stressful, but I’ve come to strike a balance between work and relaxation and even enjoy parts of Reading Period—and winter break, too.
Continue reading A Love-Hate Relationship with Fall Reading Period
2015 shattered temperature records worldwide. This year’s El Niño has been making headlines in the coral reef community since early this summer, as record-high temperatures hit coral reefs more severely than scientists have ever seen before. Yet even knowing these facts, I was not prepared for the devastation I saw at home in Hawaii over winter break.
The population of Pocillopora meandrina, the cauliflower coral that once dotted the coastline of Kailua-Kona, my hometown, has been decimated. The reef is left with the feel of an evacuated city: the coral heads are like abandoned buildings, their skeletons lifeless and vacant. Lacking the organisms that sustained them, they slowly begin to crumble.
Continue reading Elegy and ode: Finding life on a bleached reef
As final exams and paper deadlines approach, I find myself constantly questioning if I am spending my time efficiently. During exam periods, I often wonder how much time I should spend catching up on readings that I skimmed throughout the semester. It’s hard to finish every reading on time when professors assign hundreds of pages per week — and it’s almost impossible to catch up over reading period. Right now, this issue is particularly salient in my sociology class, which requires a 5-page-essay as a take-home exam. How can I review relevant material effectively and efficiently when I also have three other courses to focus on?
Happy New Year! In the January spirit of new-year-new-you, PCURs are sharing their Research Resolutions – things we plan to do, or do differently, in 2016. Take a look at what we hope to have in store:
What are your research resolutions? Let us know here, and keep us posted on your progress!
— Melissa Parnagian, Chief Correspondent
One of the most memorable experiences from my high school years was being the chief editor of a student-run research journal that my classmates and I founded. The journal, named the Broad Street Scientific (after a neighboring street), was in its 3rd year when I became chief editor. It showcased some of the most innovative and insightful research projects conducted by students at the school across a wide range of disciplines.
What I enjoyed most about running the publication was the opportunity to both learn about authors’ research and help authors showcase their research at the same time. Proofreading people’s research papers made me more knowledgeable (beyond just the surface level) on a wide array of research fields, ranging from nanomedicine to hydroelectricity. But after a few weeks of reading over research papers, I caught myself falling asleep on the job. The papers were still super interesting, but editing them alone wasn’t a very engaging process.
Continue reading The Rewards of Discussing Research
That’s probably your face as you read this title. To be sure, our typical experiences with research usually have little to nothing to do with social media. But we have to remember that, at the end of the day, research is interesting because of its power to change lives. It’s our job as researchers to show how that can happen — by making our work accessible and relevant. And who knows how to be accessible and relevant better than social media experts?
Somewhat surprisingly, that’s where art comes in. Princeton’s recent Social Media Day started with an interactive demonstration—an early morning tour of the collection in Princeton University Art Museum, with the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Chief Digital Officer, Sree Sreenivasan, offering tips on how to share art on social media. This tour was modeled after the “#emptymet” tours that showcase the Met’s artwork online, which helps maintain public interest in the works.
So taking a page out of that book, let’s recap the best quotes from Social Media Day, as illustrated by artwork from the Princeton University Art Museum.
Continue reading 5 research lessons from Social Media Day (as illustrated by the PU Art Museum)
With Princeton ranked as the No. 1 school in America, it’s easy to assume that everything here is the best that it can be: We have great professors, amazing resources, and will graduate with a degree that is highly esteemed around the world. Surrounded by all of the University’s accolades, we oftentimes forget how important the student voice is to the University’s growth and development. Over these past few weeks, however, I’ve discovered how integral students are to improving academic and social life here on campus.
Continue reading The Importance of Being Vocal: Student Feedback at Princeton
