Realizing the Global Impact of Princeton Professors

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The work of Princeton professors is recognized around the world! (slide credit: Bahador Bahrami. photo credit: Jalisha Braxton)
The work of Princeton professors is recognized around the world! (slide credit: Bahador Bahrami)

Something incredible happened the other day in class here at University College London (UCL). My psychology professor was lecturing on the topic of attention and awareness when, suddenly, a familiar name appeared on the screen: Matthew Botvinick, Professor of Psychology at Princeton University! I was struck with surprise, amazement, and joy at seeing his name on the board, feeling fortunate to have taken a neuroscience course with him the year before. A sense of pride washed over me as my European classmates & I learned about one of Professor Botvinick’s experimental studies on conflict monitoring. However, I also felt a wave of regret. Why had I not known about this study before? Shouldn’t I, a student in the Psychology Department at Princeton, know about the amazing research that my professor had conducted?

Most students at Princeton are well aware of the fact that the school’s faculty members are highly accomplished. However, while the merits of some professors are published by CNN on a daily basis, the accomplishments of other professors are less publicized. Nonetheless, many of the individuals who stand before us each and every day have and continue to produce incredible research that is highly regarded around the world.

Continue reading Realizing the Global Impact of Princeton Professors

Finding the Department that Fits

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Last year, around this time, I felt extremely unsure about my academic path at Princeton. I had always known I wanted to study something interdisciplinary, preferably combining my interests in science and the humanities. Cognitive science, which combines neuroscience with philosophy, seemed like the perfect fit. However, as Princeton had no neuroscience major and no cognitive science program, I wasn’t sure which department or program would allow me the appropriate amount of support and flexibility to do interdisciplinary research that bridged science and the humanities.

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During the spring of last year, I started to think about how to make Princeton a better academic home for myself!

For a while, my go-to departmental options had been computer science or economics. After talking to students and attempting to contact department representatives, I became worried about whether these departments would offer me the interdisciplinary flexibility to do the research I wanted. I thought about other university programs, like Stanford’s Symbolic Systems, which “focuses on computers and minds: artificial and natural systems that use symbols to communicate, and to represent information” (see more here: https://symsys.stanford.edu!) Sometimes, I wondered if I should consider transferring to another school.

One simple step at the end of spring semester of my freshman year reassured me about my options at Princeton and has kept me on the right track ever since. Continue reading Finding the Department that Fits

Asking for Help: A Question of Foolish Pride?

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While pride might not necessarily cause us to build lavish palaces as some of our ancestors did, it could have other not-so-subtle effects on our daily lives.

“What did you do?”

Ever since I decided to reach out my audacious hand and tweak a couple things with the breath analyzer system for my research project, I dreaded hearing this question from my graduate student mentor. The tweaking had started as a simple desire to become more proactive in solving problems, but, as we know from tales like this, it did not end quite as I would have liked.

Despite having worked in my current lab for nearly two years, I still often feel like there are more things than ever that I don’t know how to do, more problems that I don’t know how to solve. As I’ve previously posted, I’ve been fighting a constant uphill struggle to get over my aversion to asking for help since coming to Princeton. Although I’ve become aware of it, I’ve recently realized there’s another factor that can get in the way of trying to rectify my aversion to asking for help: hanging onto what is often just foolish pride.

One day a couple weeks ago, I spotted some odd behavior with the breath analyzer system I currently work with for my independent work project. I wasn’t exactly sure what was wrong with it, but I had asked for help so many times before that it was starting to feel like too many times. Besides, we had done the procedure several times before. So I decided it was worth it to try fixing it by myself. Continue reading Asking for Help: A Question of Foolish Pride?

April is Coming

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The snow is melting!

The saying goes that “March comes in like a lion…” and March certainly is one of the most difficult months at Princeton. Here are some of the things that get me down in March when it comes in like a lion…

  • brutal temperatures
  • unexpected snowstorms
  • midterm week
  • independent work crunch-time
  • springtime seems out of reach

…BUT the saying also goes, “…it also goes out like a lamb.” Which means we can look forward to:

  • warmer weather, sunshine, and melting snow
  • independent work deadlines (consequently, submissions!)
  • no midterm week
  • bound theses, and more academic freedom

Continue reading April is Coming

“Transferable Skills” – The Answer We’ve All Been Waiting For

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Whether you consider yourself a scholar or more of an artist, transferrable skills can help you achieve your dreams! (Photo of Antoni Gaudi's "Casa Batllo" in Barcelona, Spain. Photo credit: Jalisha Braxton)
Whether you consider yourself a scholar or more of an artist, transferable skills can help you achieve your dreams! (Photo of Antoni Gaudi’s “Casa Batllo” in Barcelona, Spain.)

As students, we frequently ask a particular question regarding our coursework: “How is this going to help me in the future?” While sometimes posed sarcastically, with a hint of disdain for whoever invented subjects like Calculus, our intention behind asking this question has always been to elicit a meaningful response that proves our coursework worthwhile. For some individuals who plan to go into academia after undergrad (myself being included), the correlation between our current coursework and our future occupation is highly apparent: writing literature reviews and research proposals now will help us write better ones in the future. No brainer. But what about the individuals who plan to work outside of an academic setting?

Interestingly enough, I recently discovered that many students at British universities receive a document from each professor listing the indispensable life skills they’ll develop through the completion of their coursework. These skills, referred to as “transferable skills”* for their usefulness in just about every occupation, encompass everything from thinking critically and negotiating to managing resources and communicating globally. This listing of skills not only seems beneficial for individuals looking to beef up their resume, but also for anyone trying to find purpose in their academic work. Continue reading “Transferable Skills” – The Answer We’ve All Been Waiting For

An Affirmation of an Ambivalent Decision

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Thumbs up or down? (Photo by Yuem Park)
Thumbs up or down?

There are moments in life when we are faced with a major decision. Whom should I ask to be my thesis adviser? Which department should I concentrate in? Should I get queso or guac with my chips? In some of these cases, there is a clearly correct decision for everyone (guac), or a clearly correct decision for you (the Geosciences Department, in my case). But there are also a substantial number of cases in which there isn’t a clearly correct decision, and you are forced to weigh pros and cons for all options. I currently find myself in such a dilemma, trying to decide which graduate school I should attend.

It is of course encouraged that I seek out advice from third parties, and sometimes they say something along the lines of, “I see that you’ve got a tough decision, but you should try to pick what’s right for you.”  But how do you know what’s right for YOU, especially since YOU haven’t actually experienced all the options yet? Continue reading An Affirmation of an Ambivalent Decision

Don’t Be Afraid To Try Something Old

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As you might remember from my first PCUR post, it can be incredibly rewarding to pursue research outside your comfort zone.  If your time at Princeton doesn’t include at least one “just because” class, then you’re missing a few important experiences: first, the chance to expand your intellectual horizons; and second, the ability to navigate diverse styles of independent work.  I’ve consciously tried to apply this idea by taking one class in a new department every semester.  Yet after shopping six classes this spring, I settled on courses in History, African American studies, Politics, and the Woodrow Wilson School – four departments I’ve definitely been a student in before.

Yeah, I *have* seen those quotes a lot. That doesn't mean I'm any less excited about living up to their challenge
Yeah, I *have* seen those quotes a lot. That doesn’t mean I’m any less excited about living up to their challenge.

What happened? Well, it’s somewhat obvious: I chose the classes I expected to enjoy.  It didn’t hurt that they were all related to, or required by, my major and certificate interests. It also didn’t hurt to read their syllabi and recognize texts and ideas from previous classes.  In short, I felt comfortable with my schedule at the end of add/drop period… and it was a strange feeling.  As Princeton students, we have access to so many amazing opportunities that it seems wrong to get comfortable in particular academic areas, rather than challenge ourselves in other ways.

I missed something important, though, by framing a conflict between comfortable and challenging classes: there’s no dichotomy between the two. Continue reading Don’t Be Afraid To Try Something Old

Tackling our Academic Biases

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This week, I was having a standard lunchtime conversation with friends about our classes. The conversation veered to next fall’s course offerings, which will include the three legendary classes Practical Ethics, Constitutional Interpretation, and Politics of Modern Islam. Having recently read reviews of Constitutional Interpretation, I joked that it might be unwise to take all three simultaneously.

“This might be a very B.S.E thing to say,” one friend said, “but I don’t understand how humanities classes can be hard.”

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A sampling of my bookshelf!

As a philosophy major, I felt shocked, and then defensive. How could an entire set of disciplines be “easy,” unless a student is uninformed or pursuing it incorrectly? I felt like retorting that most of the engineers in my humanities classes did not read what was assigned, wrote papers the night before they were due, and failed to be productive precept participants. I bit my tongue. My thoughts were equally unproductive generalizations. Continue reading Tackling our Academic Biases

Senior Thesis Spotlight: Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

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What would the world look like if you were a giant?

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Joseph Bolling ’15 (left) and Ankush Gola ’15 (right) with their project. (Image used with permission of Joseph Bolling and Ankush Gola)

For their senior thesis in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Joseph Bolling and Ankush Gola are creating a system to find  the answer to that question. In a way similar to how our brain stitches together two slightly offset images from each eye to create a 3D image, Bolling and Gola are using two quadcopters with mounted cameras to recreate the same effect on a much larger scale. Quadcopters, which are like helicopters but with four rotors instead of only one, have recently become popular among commercial and recreational drone operators.

“We want to not only enhance the user’s depth perception, but elevate their eyes,” said Gola.

Bolling and Gola drew inspiration for their project from a cartoon titled “Depth Perception” by the science comic XKCD, in which the character describes a way of using distantly spaced webcams to view clouds in his eyeglasses. In their system, Bolling and Gola plan to integrate the virtual reality headset Occulus Rift to allow users to view the world from any angle they wish, as if they were giants towering above. Aside from producing an interesting effect, the project could be especially helpful in surveying and modeling territory.

“The aerial perspective [of the quadcopter] lends itself very nicely to this type of visual effect,” explained Gola, “and quadcopter filming itself is becoming very popular, so we think will fit in well.” Continue reading Senior Thesis Spotlight: Standing on the Shoulders of Giants