When I was a little girl, I always loved the first day of school. I think that it's something about packing up your new school supplies and picking out your outfit the night before and finding a note from your mom in your lunchbox. And even though I’m 21 now, I still look forward to the first day of classes. Sometimes not much changes as you grow up, and I love that renewed energy and the fresh start (and, of course, the new notebooks)! Luckily for me, I now get two first days of school each year, since each semester brings an entirely new class schedule.

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The spring semester will start on February 1st, and needless to say, I’m excited. What makes it great at Princeton is getting to choose between so many classes. I thought that I’d write about course selection in general and my rationale for choosing my junior spring classes in this blog.

The next semester’s course offerings are always published after our midterms week, so this spring’s classes were released at the beginning of November. I spent several hours reading through all of the course offerings and making note of anything that interested me. I am like a kid in a candy shop the first time that I peruse the offerings, meaning that I want to take everything all at once!

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But alas, I sadly admitted that I cannot follow three classes at 11:00 am on Monday, so choices must be made. A typical course load at Princeton is four courses per semester, although some students choose to take five for various reasons. However, I am sticking with four this semester since I will also be writing my spring junior paper as well.

As a junior, my priority is making sure that I complete the requirements for my major (French) and my certificate (Urban Studies). I have one class left to fulfill for my Urban Studies certificate, so I really wanted to take a course that would complete the program this semester. Luckily for me, FRE 317: Visions of Paris works for both my major and my certificate, so FRE 317 was my first (and easiest) decision of which class to take. I also happen to love statistics an inordinate amount, so I am taking SML 201: Introduction to Data Science as a treat for myself. I am looking forward to breaking up all of the essays with problem sets and some math; I always appreciate a balanced workload, and I am actually quite the nerd when it comes to applied math!

Then things got a bit trickier. I am really interested in issues surrounding higher education access and outcomes, so I am excited about SOC 349: Schools and Society: Race, Class and Gender in U.S. Education and AMS 311: Education and Inequality. The course description of FRE 319: Language, Power and Identity also sounds like it could offer a neat perspective on education. But why must the timing of these courses conflict?! Well, I am going to try the three of them during the first week of courses and (hopefully) narrow it down to two of them after the first week. Wish me luck!

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Which brings me to my last point: in case you have as much trouble making decisions as me, you should take full advantage of the opportunity to course shop during the first two weeks of classes. This is the “add-drop period,” which means that we can try out different courses and switch around our schedules until our choices are finalized on February 12th. This helps with not only picking between classes but also making sure that you're in the right level of a math or language class.

I guess that I'll end by saying that the variety of course topics and the mix of both large and small classes at Princeton has always made for a nicely well-balanced and interesting course load for me. I'm excited to see what four classes I end up choosing this spring semester!

I really didn't need to write a blog post about my recent trip to Greece, because this movie clip pretty much sums it up.

In For Your Eyes Only, a 1981 James Bond film starring Roger Moore, the villainous Kristatos sets up his secret headquarters in an abandoned monastery called St. Cyril's at the top of a steep, dangerous rock formation. Bond scales the side of the cliff, defeats Kristatos, and wins back the Ministry of Defense's ATAC Machine (a high tech transmitter that really just looks like a plastic cash register). As it turns out, St. Cyril's is a real monastery right outside Kalabaka, Greece. Its real name is Agios Stefanos, and it and five other mountaintop monasteries make up the second-biggest monastic complex in Greece, known as Meteora. A week ago, I visited the Meteora monasteries to do research for my senior thesis. My trip was essentially the same as James Bond's, only with a little less stained glass-smashing and a little more note-taking.

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The six surviving Meteora monasteries were built between the 14th and 16th centuries, although monks had been living in caves in the rock formations for much longer. The churches in the monasteries are decorated with beautiful wall paintings, and several of the monasteries own impressive collections of sacred icons, relics, codices and documents. In the past, if someone wanted to see these collections, he or she would have to hike to the foot of one of the rocks and wait for the monks to pull him or her up in a net. Now, the monasteries are accessible by roads and staircases, and thousands of tourists visit year-round. My thesis for the Department of Art and Archaeology is about the experience of tourists who visit the Meteora monasteries. I am comparing the experience of viewing Byzantine art in a monastery to viewing art in the more traditional environment of an American museum. Along the way, I am investigating issues of context, Christian pilgrimage and modern monasticism.

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Of course, I couldn't write about the visitor experience without visiting the monasteries myself. Thankfully, I received full funding for my trip from the art and archaeology department and the Center for the Study of Religion. Additionally, the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies helped me connect with the nuns currently living at one of the monasteries, so I was able to interview them while I was there. Even though senior theses are pieces of undergraduate research, Princeton is committed to giving you all the support it can so that your thesis becomes a piece of legitimate scholarship.

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That said, Princeton didn't have Sheena Easton serenade me with "For Your Eyes Only" as I stepped off the plane. I'll have to talk to someone about that.

During my trip, I stayed in the small town of Kalabaka. Every morning, I donned my full-length black skirt and turtleneck (that outfit got really old really fast) and took a taxi to the one of the monasteries. My daily quad workout consisted of climbing the hundreds of steps up to the top of the rock formation. Then, I walked around the monastery and took notes on every part of the monasteries that were open to the public, paying special attention to the display of icons and other Byzantine artifacts. While a lot of my time was spent with my face buried in a notebook, there were a few moments that took my breath away. One morning, I hiked down from Meteora instead of taking a taxi. It was an incredibly foggy day, so I could not see more than my immediate surroundings. Suddenly, in the midst of a cluster of trees, I heard the monks from one of the monasteries chanting. Because the town and road were completely hidden by fog, I felt as though I had been transported back to the Middle Ages. For one moment, I experienced Meteora just as the original visitors would have, long, long ago.

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But, transcendent experiences aside, what were my scholarly takeaways from this trip to Greece? Those are for my thesis adviser's eyes only.

Wow!

I am a second-semester senior.  I am not really sure how I feel about this, honestly.  Well, first of all, I'm exhausted.  I just finished my last final this afternoon at 4:30.  It was one of those essay based tests that takes all three of the three hours given.  I won't miss that. (Also, there's a solid chance that I'll do it again next semester, but I'm going to pretend in this moment of post-exam euphoria that all schoolwork I will ever do is behind me.  Also, I'll be heading to graduate school next year to study occupational therapy (more to come on that) so there will be plenty of tests in my future.  BUT we're not going to talk about that right now.)

I don't really know what to say except for YES I AM GOING TO WATCH SO MUCH TV.  Also, I'm flying to Israel tomorrow to visit my sister who is there on a gap year, and I'm super excited.  I'll send you all an update from the airport. 

So, until then, this second-semester senior is going to nothing and remind herself that a thesis is only a paper and can be ignored for a few days.  I'll go work on that later.

One of the highlights of this year has been my roommates. After living in a single last year, I am rooming with three of the loveliest, smartest and most inspiring people I have had the opportunity to know at Princeton. Our room has become one of my favorite places to be, home to the best of friends and the most delightful of conversations. While I have a lot of fun with my roommates at "home," I was curious to know what my roommates are up to when they were not in our dorm. Thus, I visited each of them on campus in a space where they love to spend time--outside of our room.

Kenny Hubbell

Kenny is a senior from Alaska, studying chemical and biological engineering. Kenny is a pre-med student, but is also interested in drug development, having worked in pharmaceutical companies during the summers. Kenny has been a leader for Outdoor Action for three years, and he has led many camping trips all over the country!

Kenny is also a master potter. In our room, we exclusively use mugs that Kenny made, among other ceramics that Kenny fabricated. When anybody asks us where we got such wonderful mugs, we proudly declare that they are “Kenny Hubbell originals.” Kenny is also the manager of the ceramics studio on campus, which is free and open to all members of the community. If you head there on a Sunday, you can get a lesson on the art of ceramics — from molding to glazing — from the one and only Kenny.

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Neeta Patel

Neeta is a senior from New Jersey, studying Visual Arts. Neeta is interested in graphic design and has created many master pieces, which are on display all over the campus. She also designs books and album covers Neeta wakes up at 6 a.m. She has gone on a run, cleaned the room and got dressed, before any of the rest of us wake up. Neeta ran a marathon with Claire, my third roommate, last year in Philly, and she loves to go on long bike rides and runs around Princeton. Neeta is also interested in economics and computer science, often combining her art work with her abilities with computers.

Neeta's art studio is filled with her own wonderful masterpieces. She once copied an entire novel by hand, and she has built some of her works around photocopies of this novel. She has a portable manual typewriter, which she uses for some of her works. 

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Claire Zarakas

Claire is a senior from Massachusetts, studying Geosciences. Claire is interested in understanding climate change: how it affects us and how we can prepare for many of the drastic changes we are going to witness. She also loves to run marathons (casually), having run one in Chicago, in addition to the race she ran with Neeta last year. She also ran the Sustainable Energy and Development Scholars (SEADS) program for Engineers without Borders, where she hosted many small group sessions to discuss sustainability with important and influential people in the industry.

Over the summer, she studied nitrogen cycles in South America, and she recently even got the chance to present at the American Geophysical Union on her research. She often works in Guyot Hall, the home of the Geosciences Department, where she can devour plates of cookies in no time. It's a weakness she shares with me.

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I feel weirdly confident in writing that I think one of the most exciting moments of my entire senior thesis happened a few weeks ago. 

Here's a blog post opening up my studio to you. 

Three years ago around this time, I was applying to Princeton, and I had no idea what I wanted to study.

Before we graduate, Princeton students complete a little something called the senior thesis.

Among undergraduates, mathematics is perhaps one of the University’s most polarizing subjects. For the quantitatively inclined, the rigors of mathematical reasoning provide both a fascinating challenge and an indispensable tool. To these students, numbers bring clarity — and a reward. Though the mechanics of calculation can prove difficult, the sense of accomplishment is well worth the struggle; few things are more satisfying than the feeling of achievement upon completing an arduous problem set.  

To others, though, the specter of mathematics is far more frightening than it is inspiring, and many a humanities major has been known to avoid quantitative courses at all costs. For these students, high school math was more than enough. Here at Princeton, they’d rather spend their hours deciphering Adorno than proving theorems.

Yet even for the English major, the value of mathematics is hard to deny. After graduation, the quantitatively adept are in high demand. In our increasingly digital world, the ability to reason mathematically is useful in a seemingly endless range of contexts. 

Personally, I’ve always been stuck between these positions. Though I fared well in math prior to Princeton, I’ve never enjoyed it enough to even vaguely entertain the notion of studying college-level mathematics. 

Thankfully, Keith Devlin, a professor visiting from Stanford, is offering just the course for people like me. Welcome to Math 195: a class designed to teach the tools of mathematical reasoning without the attendant intricacies of advanced theoretical math. In our first class, Devlin tells us that the world is full of people who can do advanced mathematics competently and accurately. Far rarer, though, are those in the humanities and other non-STEM disciplines who can reason with the precision of mathematicians. It is at these kinds of intersections, where the rigor of mathematics is brought to bear on the challenges of other areas, where things get interesting.

Half a semester in, it’s been a whirlwind of discovery. Devlin is as engaging as they come: a former consultant for the CIA, a wildly popular guest on NPR, and a prolific author, he breaks from the stereotypical mold of the bookish academic. Classes are punctuated with anecdotes drawn from his decades of pedagogical experience. Over the course of his career, Devlin seems to have done mathematics in every context imaginable: government consulting, the private sector — even a popular television program. For us, a group of math students consisting almost entirely of non-quantitative majors, these creative applications of mathematical methods are a revelation. In one particularly striking lecture, Devlin tells us about a formula that’s been used to catch murderers. Hardly the dreadful stuff of 12th grade calculus.

Even more interesting, perhaps, is the way that the course has been delivered. Alongside our group of about 20 Princeton undergraduates, 30,000 others are simultaneously taking the course online. Introduction to Mathematical Thinking is offered as a MOOC, a massively open online course. Around the world, many, many others are learning about the issues that we grapple with in class. In fact, we watch the very same online lectures as every other student, and are graded on identical problem sets. What is different, though, is that we get the ‘VIP version’ of the course, so to speak. Alongside the online lectures, our class also benefits from three hours of in-person class time a week to ask Devlin questions and work together on the more challenging problems. Witnessing this against the backdrop of thousands of other students who would relish such an opportunity, every class feels like a luxury. It’s a sense of gratitude worth cultivating.

As we near the end of the semester, we are meant to be thinking about a final project. Fascinatingly, we’ve practically been given carte blanche — pick a subject we’re personally interested in, Devlin tells us, and he’ll help us find a mathematical angle to approach it from. As soon as I heard that, I knew exactly what I’d be writing. One of my more idiosyncratic passions is collecting credit card and airline miles, and figuring out how to best optimize my spending, booking my flights strategically, and signing up for new credit cards where lucrative bonuses beckon. Until now, my approach to all of this has largely been ramshackle. I usually meander around the Internet until I find a few opinions on which award schemes are superior to others. Confronted with dissenting opinions, I tend to go with what seems superficially most plausible. With this class, though, I’m excited to add a bit more rigor to what is admittedly a rather strange hobby.

Thankfully, Devlin is no point-neophyte himself, having flown more than 2 million miles on United, a landmark he hit during one of the first weeks of class. Having him advise my project then, seems particularly fitting.

Ultimately, this class has motivated a desire to dig deeper and go farther in the pursuit of mathematical knowledge. It’s a result I hardly ever thought would be possible in college, but an outcome, I think, worth being excited about.

While the amazing food may bring many through the doors of the CJL, our engaging activities and the incredible relationships made within our walls are what keep hundreds of students connected to Jewish life here on campus.