Let Your Happy Self Shine: Why Happiness Shouldn’t Be Saved Only for Moments of Victory

Posted on by Angel Toasakul

This is a picture of the Princeton Chapel, taken by myself the summer I first arrived at Princeton.
Princeton Chapel in the summer

“What’s your priority this semester?” my friend asked after our first meal together post-summer break. My instinct was to say classes, internships, research—after all, we’re at school, preparing for life after college. The pressure to secure a job or get accepted into graduate school looms large. What could be more important than staying focused on the future? But none of those answers felt right. I paused for a moment before saying, “being happy.”

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TigerJunction vs ReCal: How I Plan My Courses for the Next Semester

Posted on by Shannon Yeow

Tiger Junction Logo

TigerJunction Logo

It’s always a mixed bag of emotions when it comes to course selection. Personally, I find the period between when the next semester’s courses are released and before the course selection date to be especially fun—I can play around with the different ideal schedules (potentially having no-class Fridays and no night classes), look ahead to the rest of the courses that I’ll be taking during my time here, and discover new classes. Whether people end up choosing to take classes to fulfill requirements, classes that interest them, or classes that could teach them important skills, an important aspect in choosing courses for the upcoming semester is course planning. TigerApps is a group of student developers that builds apps to improve the campus life experience for Princeton students. One of the TigerApps created is ReCal, which is the most popular way to aid in course planning and ensure a smooth process for course selection. Recently, TigerJunction ReCal+, an application for course planning inspired by ReCal and designed to be an “improved” version, has made its rounds among students. As course selection season is upon us, I wanted to take the opportunity to show how I plan my courses for the next semester and provide an in-depth comparison between ReCal and TigerJunction ReCal+ to inform how other students plan their courses for the upcoming semesters.

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No Experience Necessary: An Interview with Delaan Nedd ’25

Posted on by Alexis Wu

Delaan Nedd '25 and the Bocarsly Lab

Delaan Nedd ’25 (second from the left in the top row) and the Bocarsly Lab. Photo from Bocarsly Lab News.

As we enter December, it seems like summer is far, far away, but it’s a good time to start thinking about summer plans if you haven’t already. If you’re interested in research, there are numerous summer research programs whose applications are currently open (the Office of Undergraduate Research has a great list here).

For students with no experience with research, just getting started can be daunting. I wanted to hear from students whose first hands-on exposure to research was through Princeton’s research programs, so I interviewed Delaan Nedd ‘25. Delaan spent this past summer in the Princeton Department of Chemistry’s Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship in Chemistry (SURF-C) program. SURF-C is a nine-week program for first and second-year undergraduate students to work on cutting-edge chemistry research alongside Princeton faculty, post-docs, graduate students, and other undergrads. What’s exciting is that the research Delaan contributed to during SURF-C was recently published in the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Dalton Transactions journal—check out the full paper here!

In this interview, we discuss his experience with on-campus summer research both in and out of the lab, as well as how the summer further informed his academic and career interests.

Continue reading No Experience Necessary: An Interview with Delaan Nedd ’25