On (not) applying to grad school

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Was I really ready to commit the next 5 years of my life to another Ivory Tower?

As I’ve muddled my way through three years of college, the questions people have asked me about my studies have changed. It started with possibility and exploration – “what are you studying?” and “ooh, chemistry was my worst subject!” – but when I returned home this summer, the question “and what are you going to do next?” reared its ugly head.

Grad school, followed by academic research, had always been my default answer. It’s what my dad did with his psychology degree, it’s very close to what my mom did with her English degree (until she turned off on a veering path through secondary education, administration, web development, and consulting). Perhaps more importantly, it’s the path most visible to students actually in university, surrounded as we are with, well, grad students and academics. Especially at Princeton (where research in even the “applied” sciences tends towards the theoretical), there’s a dearth of visibility of other paths.

Continue reading On (not) applying to grad school

Reframing “Independent” Work

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Every senior dreams of the day their thesis is finally binded! Photo credit: Princeton University Office of Communications
Every senior dreams of the day their thesis is finally bound!

This is how I respond to a non-senior who asks about my senior thesis:

“I love my topic and my adviser is amazing; I can’t wait to start my research!”

& THIS is how I respond when a fellow senior asks about my thesis:

” OMG I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M DOING; WHY DO I FEEL SO LOST??!”

Despite the great deal of resources departments provide to help seniors with their independent work, feeling overwhelmed appears to be inevitable at the start of senior year. This seems to hold true no matter how many times you emailed your adviser over the summer or how much time you spent writing (and rewriting) your IRB proposal. If you’re anything like me, your natural reaction to stress is to seek seclusion; you’ve probably thought to yourself, “Senior year, I’m going into isolation in order to finish this thesis- it’s the only way it can be done!”  

The name “independent work” promotes this same idea, that your thesis must be your own work and therefore requires you to independently figure everything out. However, it’s possible that by reframing the way we think about independent work, we can actually succeed in completing our senior theses and save ourselves a lot of stress along the way.

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Getting that On-Campus Feeling (and that Research Advice)

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With banners raised and schedules posted, it’s safe to say Princeton is ready for another school year. But how do you know when you’re ready – when getting (back) to campus finally feels like being on campus?

This little guy counts as another important sign that you're back in the Orange Bubble.
This little guy counts as another important sign that you’re back in the Orange Bubble.

For returning students and first-timers alike, this transition is hard to verbalize. Maybe it occurs when you hug your family goodbye. Maybe it’s when you empty your last suitcase. Or maybe it’s when you organize everything from that suitcase – pillows neatly thrown on the bed, pictures of summer adventures hung with wall-safe tape. The 2015-2016 school year couldn’t begin without these moments…but I don’t think any of them bring that being-on-campus feeling. I actually think all of them do: Being here is a collection of moments that somehow combine to make sense.

At PCUR, we’re all about making sensible combinations from smaller parts. In our own research, we analyze data from engineering, humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences to reach coherent conclusions. In our blogs, we filter through rumors about the research process to share universal truths – and universal pitfalls – that we’ve learned from experience. As students ourselves, we know what you’re feeling. We’ve felt it. We’re currently feeling it as the fall semester gets underway. Our goal is to make research less stressful and more exciting, which is why we hope you’ll to subscribe to our research-related musings (using the box at the top right). If each PCUR post is a moment, then the overall blog is a collection to guide you through independent work. Continue reading Getting that On-Campus Feeling (and that Research Advice)

The Aesthetics of Mathematics: Bringing Together Princeton’s Academics

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At the beginning of last month, my Greek professor forwarded the class an email titled “The Aesthetics of (Greek!) Mathematics!” Within the email, he cheerily suggested that we attend this special lecture event at 4:30pm, “for a reminder of why we still want to learn Greek (and yes, math, too).”

After an afternoon of studying in Holder Courtyard, I dragged a friend along to McCormick to investigate. The Faber lecture, given by Professor Reviel Netz of Stanford University, was hosted by the Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in the Humanities. Past lectures have also been interdisciplinary in nature, covering topics like “Orality and Sociality” or “Why do we Care about Dead Bodies?”

Springtime studying in Holder Courtyard! Photo courtesy of Dalma Foldesi '15.
Springtime studying in Holder Courtyard!

The first thing I noticed was the diversity of the audience. Graduate students, professors, and a few undergraduates sat together in the room. I immediately recognized my linear algebra professor sitting with an art history graduate student, and behind my current philosophy professor. Next to me sat a group of people chuckling and exchanging jokes, who I later discovered were professors in the Woodrow Wilson School.

Continue reading The Aesthetics of Mathematics: Bringing Together Princeton’s Academics

Looking Back and Looking Ahead

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I recently met a professor who said he finds Princeton especially interesting this time of year because, all of a sudden, people are constantly “constructing things” across campus. Teams of facilities workers string cables from buildings. They drive fences into the ground. They erect massive tents and lay dance floors and stages underneath.

Farewell for the summer from the Princeton Correspondents on Undergraduate Research!
Farewell for the summer from the Princeton Correspondents on Undergraduate Research!

Yes, Reunions and Graduation are a few short days away. Strangely, it seems that while students are winding down—finishing exams, heading off to summer programs or perhaps beach trips for “dead week”—the university undertakes elaborate, if temporary, projects in preparation for the pomp and circumstance of late May and early June.

With the start of summer, there will be a respite in our blogging work at PCUR. But before we “sign off,” it’s worth taking a glance back at correspondents’ contributions. This year, the blog’s first, our team of students has shared experiences and insights of both depth and breadth. They offered tips on making your way through the writing process and enumerated the dos and don’ts for drafting funding proposals or completing IRB applications. They interviewed students about senior thesis projects. They proposed creative strategies for choosing a major or getting started on a new project. We even got the chance to hear from a correspondent during her semester abroad about how to continue developing research skills at a new institution. Continue reading Looking Back and Looking Ahead

A Guide to Independent Work Abroad

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Studying abroad entails a lot more than just visiting famous landmarks like the London Eye (photo credit Jalisha Braxton)
Studying abroad entails a lot more than just visiting famous landmarks like the London Eye.

One of the biggest concerns students have when considering studying abroad junior year is how they will work on their independent work, specifically their Junior Paper (JP). While the experience of writing a JP abroad varies from person to person, I can say that I found writing the JP abroad to be a lot easier than I had initially expected! I did, however, intentionally seek out ways to facilitate the JP writing process. Here are a few things I did that can make JP writing a lot easier if you’re planning to go abroad:

First off, I found it extremely helpful to start thinking about my JP in advance, at least a month before leaving for study abroad. Although I wasn’t sure what I wanted to write about, I had a general area that I wanted to explore (cognition in the classroom). By deciding this early on, I was able to meet with my adviser and brainstorm potential JP topics. Together, my adviser and I also found professors at my university abroad who were involved in research related to the areas I was most interested in. I was then able to reach out to these professors via email to introduce myself and find out which classes they were teaching the following semester. I actually ended up taking a class based on the work done by a professor that I reached out to, and it really helped me narrow down my JP interests!

That leads to my next recommendation: design your coursework around potential JP topics. Continue reading A Guide to Independent Work Abroad

From Paper to Presentation: Completing the Research Journey

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Moving from the paper to a presentation.
Moving from the paper to a presentation.

Most of us consider the submission of our bound theses to be the end of the Princeton road. While this is definitely a huge accomplishment and a major milestone along the path (congratulations!), we shouldn’t forget that many of us are still required to communicate our findings as a presentation to the wider community. In fact, this last step is arguably even more important than the bound thesis itself – what good is your hard-earned discovery if no one knows about it?

But the presentation brings with it some unique challenges – how do you communicate your findings to a general (or at least wider) audience? How do you condense one year’s worth of work into just 10 minutes? Continue reading From Paper to Presentation: Completing the Research Journey

A Lab Tucked in the Depths of the E-Quad

Posted on by Stacey Huang

Unless you’re an engineer, you’ve probably never stepped inside the E-Quad. Usually, you’re lucky if you get to the E-Quad at least once before you graduate!

But never fear — you can visit the E-Quad digitally, too. Today I’d like to bring the E-Quad to you and take you on a tour around the lab I work in, the Princeton University Laser Sensing (PULSe) Lab.

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A walk down the J-Wing in the E-Quad.

It all starts with a walk down a hallway on the third floor of the J-Wing of the E-Quad. It can get especially dark at night, since the lights here are energy-saving and only turn on when someone is walking by. Continue reading A Lab Tucked in the Depths of the E-Quad

Draft to Deadline: The Sophomore Experience

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2017 is not the first class to be in this position.

Sophomore year is the awkward transitional phase of the Princeton experience. When you arrive on campus in September – propped above the new freshmen – you feel empowered by your first-year revelations: how to divide your time among classes, where to find accurate reviews about said classes, and how to get to said classes in under ten minutes. At the same time, however, you have not yet earned the title of “upperclassman,” which brings with it the junior papers and senior theses you were admitted to write. It is both freeing and confusing to be sandwiched between these two extremes.

It’s also unbelievable (at least for me) that sophomore year can actually come to an end. I entered the 2014-15 school year with expectations — a draft, if you will, of how to balance prerequisites with broader passions. Now we’re approaching the deadline. And besides using a research analogy in the preceding sentence, I found that research was a huge part of sophomore life. It turns out that the awkward phase is the perfect phase to get comfortable with your own research expectations, before you begin to apply them more intensely. Continue reading Draft to Deadline: The Sophomore Experience