Human Resources for your Independent Work!

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It’s JP crunch time! Many students like myself are working feverishly on campus on their junior papers as winter break approaches. This week, I’m going to share advice about the single most useful resource I’ve found on campus as I work through my own junior paper: Princeton professors. Scheduling a meeting or two with faculty relevant to your work, whether you know them or not, will help you greatly in your path to a great research paper.

First, some background: many departments have different guidelines and setups for junior independent work. Most departments require two junior papers; some require one. In the philosophy department, all juniors take a small (4-5 person) topical junior seminar in the fall to guide them into the process of writing independently. This fall’s topics were Consequentialism & Common Sense Morality, Newcomb’s Problem, and Skepticism, Reason, & Faith. In seminar sessions, students discuss issues central to these topics.

I spent my semester in Consequentialism & Common Sense Morality reading Shelly Kagan’s Normative Ethics and debating features of the text with my classmates. The literature was vast, spanning metaethics (what are the fundamental bases of ethical theories? are they valid?), normative ethics (what are relevant factors that make actions good or bad?), and applied ethics (what are answers to moral questions people face in their lives?). Any one of these categories holds thousands of unanswered, often-debated questions. So by the second half of the semester, when it was time to choose a junior paper topic, I felt predictably lost.

I’d be lying if I said I’ve never gotten lost on campus…but feeling lost on a research paper is much scarier!

Continue reading Human Resources for your Independent Work!

Five Tips to Tackle Winter Break  

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My wonderful mom keeps sending me pictures like this - this one captioned, "incredible morning sunrise!" I'm pretty excited to be home.
My wonderful mom keeps sending me pictures like this – this one captioned, “incredible morning sunrise!” I’m pretty excited to go home.

In a few days, I’ll be home in sunny Kona, Hawaii. I haven’t been back since June, and by now I’m hankering to feel the warm Pacific on my skin. I’m going to eat homemade chocolate truffles, free-dive with my dad, catch up with old friends…and also write an entire junior paper, and review a semester’s worth of organic chemistry. Gulp.

Last Friday, hoping to figure out how to juggle it all, I attended a workshop at the McGraw Center: Balancing Work and Play During Winter Break. Here are five essential take-aways:

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Five (and a half) steps to choosing a lab

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It’s that time of year again – you’ve (sort of) got the hang of your classes, you have (a short) break coming up before finals, and you (kind of) feel free to think about your future in research. Your department office, OIP, PEI, and Princeton offices you’ve never heard of are sending out long lists of opportunities to do research in fantastic, far-off places – China! France! San Francisco! The E-Quad!

Even without leaving Frick, there are all-too-many labs to choose from.

How do you choose? A few weeks ago, Stacey wrote an excellent post detailing a few of the clearinghouses researchers have for finding opportunities, and my fellow correspondents are working on a Resources for Researchers list of opportunities and support systems for researchers on-campus (watch this space). But with so many opportunities out there, it’s hard to be sure that you’re choosing the best one. Whether choosing a summer internship, a JP, or a thesis advisor, here are a few things you can think about as you pick what to apply to and listen to. Continue reading Five (and a half) steps to choosing a lab

Surviving D3 with the help of Missing Links

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It’s that time of year: freshmen get their first taste of research at Princeton through their third Writing Seminar assignment, quite unaffectionately known as D3. D3 defined my life in the last few months of 2014. My entire daily schedule was built around it. But at the end of the day, it was probably one of the most rewarding experiences in my life.

Through D3, I discovered a simple formula to find engaging research or project topics that would enhance my academic experience at Princeton. To this day, I still use that same formula, which I call the method of missing links, to stay engaged with my research.

The “Art of Science” exhibit in the Friend Center is a perfect example of an interdisciplinary missing link!

Flashback to December of last year. I sat in my room utterly puzzled. I was supposed to write a paper that actively engaged with 10-12 scholarly sources in order to create an original argument. The last scholarly source I had read took me over five hours to fully understand. Now I was being asked to take 12 of these sources and use them in the framework of a larger self-created idea. And I wasn’t even given an end goal – I had no idea what I was supposed to prove.

Continue reading Surviving D3 with the help of Missing Links

Speak to the World: Communicate your work to others at Princeton Research Day

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The audience for your research is the world.
The audience for your research is, quite literally, the world.

By now, you’ve probably received one of the numerous campus-wide emails promoting Princeton Research Day, a new initiative by the University to celebrate student research right here in the Orange Bubble. I must admit that even though I spend a large amount of time talking about my own research for the PCUR blog, I was initially hesitant to apply. It’s odd to think that I feel more pressure having to present my work in layman’s terms to the larger university community compared to presenting to the professors in my department for a grade!

Still, when I stepped back and considered the number of times I’ve talked about my thesis in regular conversation, I felt reassured that I’d be prepared for Princeton Research Day. As a senior, I’ve noticed the standard ice-breaker among my classmates has become “So what are you doing for your thesis?” Even though my thesis is certainly something that’s constantly on my mind, I still have to think about the best way to describe my work in 10 seconds to make it interesting enough for a conversation. It’s hard to get into all the details and nuances of a continuously evolving project (that I’ll spend the entire academic year working on!) while highlighting what’s important and relevant about it.

I think that’s really why Princeton Research Day is appealing to me. This is what research is all about — conveying your work to peers and fellow researchers, who often might not have a good idea of why you’re doing what you are. Continue reading Speak to the World: Communicate your work to others at Princeton Research Day

Seeking Originality — in Writing Sem and Beyond

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Be original.

Professors never fail to offer this piece of advice. As R3 deadlines approach, Writing Seminar professors are undoubtedly pushing students to shoot for originality in their writing. And who can blame them? No one wants to read a worn-out argument or encounter unsurprising research findings. But originality is not only your professor’s concern.

Throughout my research experiences, I have infallibly found that I benefit the most from original projects. In my writing seminar, The Politics of Intimacy, a creative purpose continuously drove my work. I began my research with the intention of writing about depictions of sexuality in films and their influence on movie ratings and reviews. I intended to use the film Blue Valentine (2010) as my primary evidence because extensive pop-culture articles and scholarly discussion have addressed the implications of its rating. The Motion Picture Association of America rated Blue Valentine NC-17 (their harshest rating) because they deemed certain sexual acts inappropriate to watch. This rating prompted significant controversy and feminist analyses of the MPAA’s policy that I found to be incredibly intriguing.

In a sea of Princeton students doing exceptional research, how can you push yourself to stand out from the crowd?

Continue reading Seeking Originality — in Writing Sem and Beyond

The Project That Made Me a Researcher… Sort Of

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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, Dylan shares his story.

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The Project That Made Me a Researcher. Hmm. It’s a loaded topic for me because it makes a big assumption: Am I a researcher? It feels awkward to ascribe the word to myself, like a shirt that doesn’t quite fit right.

I definitely do research. And I definitely love doing it. But a researcher? Something about it seems so … prestigious, perhaps? Important? World-changing? Where do I fit in all this?

Located in Lincoln Center in New York City, the NYPL for the Performing Arts is an excellent resource for anyone researching theater, dance, or other forms of live performance.

The project that comes to mind is my freshman writing sem paper. I looked at how La Cage Aux Folles — the first Broadway musical to portray a gay couple at its center — tamed its queerness for a commercial 1983 audience. It was the first time I’d discovered that my niche interests could be considered academic, and I felt compelled to go out of my way to learn more than I might otherwise have. My ambition pushed me out of Princeton — twice — to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, where an extensive archive of video recordings of theatre is maintained. There, wedged into a small cubicle with an archaic looking TV screen, I watched the original 1983 production and, on a second trip, the 2004 revival. Sitting there, surrounded by a smorgasbord of theater junkies fixated on their own little screens, I had an epiphany: research is fun.

Continue reading The Project That Made Me a Researcher… Sort Of

5 Cool Things You Can Do If You Present at Princeton Research Day

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When you present at Princeton Research Day, you're a cool tiger!
When you present at Princeton Research Day, you’ll be one cool tiger!

As you might have noticed, everyone’s talking about Princeton Research Day — but what is it exactly, and what can it do for you? In a campus-wide email about the event, Princeton Research Day was described as a chance to celebrate research on campus. Which, it is. But that premise might sound a little vague. Never fear, readers: To help you out, here’s a list of 5 cool things you can do if you apply to present at Princeton Research Day.

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The Search for Life Work: Netting Bats in Madagascar

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“My friends, family, and classmates sometimes ask me why I do the things I do,” muses Ph.D. student Cara Brook in a recent NatGeo blog post. “Why do I spend so much time in remote corners of the world, tracking lethal viruses in enormous bats?”

In its broader form, this is a question all researchers can relate to: not just why she is so passionate, but how she found such passion for her particular research. How can we ever choose one question, of all the world’s exciting unknowns, for a thesis, or Ph.D., or career?

Cara and a Malagasy fruit bat pose in the field
Cara and a Malagasy fruit bat pose in the field.

Cara and I met up in a campus coffee shop – each of us, like good ecologists, bringing a reusable mug – and I asked Cara how she came to her research. Over the past four years, Cara has spent more time in Madagascar than in Princeton. In the field, she camps in the remote wilderness, traps fruit bats, and collects samples of their blood, hair, and (sometimes) teeth, to trace the paths of pathogens through populations. Cara has sacrificed much – warm showers, wi-fi, and uninterrupted sleep, to start – for her research. How did she find a question that drives her so deeply? Continue reading The Search for Life Work: Netting Bats in Madagascar

The Museum of Blind Alleys

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The Museum of Jurassic Technology
The Museum of Jurassic Technology

In the Palms District of LA, across from an In-and-Out Burger and a vegan cafe by the peculiarly Californian name of “Native Foods,” is a quaint red-and-green façade. Inside the deceptively small storefront is a museum, but one without the monumental wonder of the Smithsonian or the Met, and certainly not the modern crispness of the Getty or the Whitney. The Museum of Jurassic Technology is a curio cabinet, in the tradition of the Alchemists and Philosophes of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. Its dark and twisted exhibit halls explore forgotten chapters of humanity from “Dogs of the Soviet Space Program” to “Collections from Los Angeles Area Mobile Home Parks.” Like Hollywood to the north, the Museum exists in a world parallel to, but separate from, the surrounding sun-bleached modernity – and I owe much to that odd world. Continue reading The Museum of Blind Alleys