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

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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

Learning from What Isn’t

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With May finally here, we’ve reached the home stretch of the 2014-15 school year. Make no mistake: This is an achievement. You deserve to celebrate. Grab an extra fro-yo cone next time you’re in the dining hall, and enjoy knowing the machine has more handles than there are weeks remaining in the semester.

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Here’s hoping your fro-yo cone turns out better than mine.

After that *debauchery*, ease back into the research world with a reflexive book – like Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several Short Sentences About Writing, which was recommended in my African American Studies class last semester. As the title makes clear, it’s a series of short sentences about how to approach the writing process. Klinkenborg replaces oft-repeated mechanical suggestions with much more useful ideological ones. My favorite appears on page 29: “Every sentence could have been otherwise but isn’t.”

Following Klinkenborg’s words, every sentence in your research papers is a deliberate choice. Every argument could have reached a different conclusion, but did not. As you question, test, and analyze facts in your independent work, a crucial step is to recognize why you chose a particular arrangement of information. This goes beyond mere adherence to a thesis. Why did you pursue one research lead, and not another?   Continue reading Learning from What Isn’t

Moving Forward by Looking Back: Revisiting Old Posters, Papers, and Texts

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A couple of the posters that hang outside the lab.

Deep in the darkest depths of the E-quad, there is a lab I go to—a lab where I run all my optics experiments, run tests with the breath analyzer instrument I work with, and that I have come to know and love during the past year. The entrance to the lab actually includes a space for presentation posters, which show off the work of graduate students and past interns. Usually I’m in a rush to get in or out and don’t spare these posters a second glance. But last week, for some reason or another (perhaps because I was feeling less stressed than usual), I decided to take some time to  look at them.

When I did, I was surprised. What had seemed to me before like a mass of incomprehensible jargon and tangle of convoluted science was now something more tangible—here were key words I had encountered over and over again throughout the past year, concepts I had heard about many times in group meetings. Even within a mix of phrases that were still not so familiar to me, I could at least grasp what the projects were about and start to see what was so relevant and interesting about these projects. I even found the work that described the novel technology behind the breath analyzer instrument I currently work on, and I felt good being able to understand that poster in its entirety.

It’s kind of strange. Even though I had looked at these posters before, that was back when I had first joined the lab, more than a year ago. Continue reading Moving Forward by Looking Back: Revisiting Old Posters, Papers, and Texts

To those still in Thesis Life…

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Those tanks can be flipped soon... (Photo by Yuem Park)
Those tanks can be flipped soon…

Congratulations to all seniors who have finally attained the legendary PTL! After four challenging (but hopefully rewarding) years, you deserve the relaxation that post-thesis life affords you.

But there are still many seniors who can only dream of such relaxation. And, as “#PTL” floods social media and the black tanks rapidly turn orange, it’s hard to not feel a twinge of jealously for our carefree friends.

Don’t let these friends distract you from the final push! These last few day are crucial for your thesis. As with all deadlines, the final approach is almost always the most work-intensive (even if you’ve been working diligently throughout the year).

In an attempt to keep you all motivated, here are a few words of advice: Continue reading To those still in Thesis Life…

Some Quick Tips on Making Figures

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Part of a figure I am working on.
Part of a figure I am working on.

For my fellow seniors – the end is in sight.

At least in theory, we’re at that stage when we’re polishing up our theses, making sure that our words make sense and our figures are intelligible.

But, it is also important to make sure that our theses look nice – nothing shouts amateur more than a pixelated figure hastily scribbled freehand in MS Paint.

Don’t know where to begin? You’ve come to the right place. Below I’ve briefly outlined a few quick tips to making your thesis look like the work of a seasoned professional… even if it’s not. Some examples are tailored more toward those with quantitative data, but hopefully there is enough below to be useful to anyone, whether you’re making bar graphs, diagrams, or anything in between!  Continue reading Some Quick Tips on Making Figures

Join PCUR: Five Reasons to Become a Correspondent

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One arch for each reason, courtesy of Whitman College.

As PCUR’s inaugural year comes to a close, we have good news and better news. The good news is we’ll keep blogging next year, to help guide you with our personal research stories.  We’re excited to continue advising you from draft to deadline.

The better news is we’re looking for new members – and since anybody is welcome to apply, you must be excited, too. Why should you submit an application to join us next year?  Here are five of infinity reasons to that effect:

  1. You’re reading this blog

If you clicked on a link about undergraduate research, then research is obviously on your mind. And since you’re still reading, you must have spare time to think about independent work. Interest + time = great PCUR posts.

  1. You’ve had (any) research experience

Whether analyzing specimens in the field, collecting data online, or writing a term paper, you’ve learned from participating in a research project.   Your insights could help someone get to or get through a particular stage of independent work – and we’d love to know how. Continue reading Join PCUR: Five Reasons to Become a Correspondent