During move-in and the start of classes last week, I saw and heard fellow '16ers saying things like, "The last first day of move-in!" or "The last first day of class!" or "The last first time I sleep past my new semester's class!" 

Congratulations to everyone recently admitted to Princeton! You probably have some big choices to make this April, and I sympathize, since I have just completed making my own decision about where to attend graduate school in physics.

The graduate school decision process is a little different than the undergraduate one, but just as difficult and exciting.  It starts at the beginning of February, when decisions arrive. Many undergraduate schools give you advance notice about when they'll post decisions, but physics graduate school applicants have no such warning.

For about three weeks starting at the beginning of February, decisions arrive in your inbox at seemingly random times. These times are sometimes quite strange; I received acceptances on Saturday afternoon and at 2:55 a.m.  Even worse, many schools send out acceptances and rejections to different applicants at different times, which means that a friend might hear from a school before you do, and you may have no idea what that means. Given all this uncertainty, my friends and I were very stressed during February.

Luckily, however, we all did very well, and ended up with some wonderful schools to choose from. Though it was nice to have this variety, it did make deciding which school to attend harder. Most graduate schools pay for you to visit them and meet with their professors to help with this decision.  I decided to visit four of the schools that admitted me: UCLA, UCSD, MIT and Princeton itself.

I started with the California schools. I left New Jersey on a wet, cold, nasty morning, so when I stepped out of the airport in Los Angeles that afternoon, I seriously considered picking UCLA just because of the weather. Walking around UCLA's campus a few hours later reinforced this initial, favorable impression. UCLA's campus is filled with fountains, grass and open, elegant architecture that takes full advantage of its California setting, and the result is stunning.

The next day, I talked with several UCLA plasma physics professors and toured UCLA's plasma physics facilities, which were very impressive. These meetings helped me to better understand UCLA's offerings, but they also helped me better understand my prospective field. Plasma physics is currently facing some funding challenges, and the UCLA professors had opinions about why these challenges are happening and how to work through them.

I left L.A. that evening for San Diego. This trip again impressed on me the beauty of California: My train raced past beautiful beaches and majestic hills, and I could easily picture myself moving to San Diego, buying a surfboard and juggling physics research with new, ocean-based hobbies.

The next day, I went to UCSD's campus. The UCSD professor with whom I would have worked was away from campus to give an invited talk. But I spoke with many graduate students and other professors, and I Skyped with this professor later in the month.

I left California that evening completely exhausted, but with more understanding of the two schools.

My next "visit" was to Princeton, which admittedly wasn't much of a visit, since it entailed only taking a shuttle to the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), where I would do my graduate work. I already knew a lot about the research facilities, so I spent most of my time meeting with Princeton professors I didn't know well and talking to other prospective students who were visiting at the same time.

My final visit was to MIT. This was also my longest visit; the MIT physics department's graduate open house starts early Wednesday morning, and ends midday on Friday. Even with all this time, I didn't feel like I got a full understanding of the department or of the school as whole because MIT is a very large and busy place. However, I was impressed enough with what I did see, and with the prospect of moving closer to my Vermont family, I decided to commit to MIT.

Though I'm satisfied with my decision, remembering that these are now my last days in Princeton makes me sad. This sadness is amplified by the excitement of the pre-frosh, who discuss Princeton's qualities in their Facebook group and send me more questions via private message. Every time I talk to them about the incredible opportunities at Princeton, I remember that I'm about to leave these very opportunities behind, and that these opportunities are pretty incredible. One pre-frosh recently requested a "pitch" of the strengths of Princeton's physics and astrophysics programs, and I leave my response here so you know what I mean:

"Princeton University and the nearby Institute for Advanced Study together host arguably the most exceptional community of theoretical physicists in the entire world, and this can lead to some pretty cool encounters. For example, a few weeks ago, a visiting postdoc gave a presentation about the topic I'm working on for my thesis. I went, and ended up sitting a few feet away from Juan Maldacena, a physicist responsible for huge advances in string theory.

The University also has many astro/physics opportunities that are probably unique. If you’re interested in biophysics, or just in seeing how physics fits with other sciences in general, the Integrated Science program would be perfect for you. JPs (junior papers) and theses make sure that everyone gets involved in research, and some of these independent works are actually published (more common in astro than physics, I think). PPPL is probably the best plasma physics research facility in the entire United States, and possibly the world, and it’s very easy to do a JP, thesis or internship there.

Beyond all that, physics at Princeton is pretty fun as well. Physics majors tend to be close to others in their year, since they bond over problem sets. The senior physics majors are sad that we’ll be parting soon, so we’re holding a series of physics parties this semester. The astro department typically has very few majors, so it is known for offering lots of individual attention and support."

One of the most common questions I am asked is about Princeton's competitiveness: Are students here extremely competitive, or do they collaborate on their work? This was also a very important question for me, and is perhaps the thing about Princeton that has most pleasantly surprised me. Considering that most students in Princeton have come here after several years of a competitive environment in high school, I imagined the environment at Princeton to be cutthroat and fierce, but I couldn't have been more wrong.

Collaboration in Princeton is highly encouraged. In all my classes with problem sets, instructors have organized sessions for students to come together and discuss the sets. I have spent numerous nights working late with my fellow students, throwing chalk frustratedly at a chalkboard, trying to make sense of a particular problem. These sessions are incredibly helpful as we get to pick each other's brains and bounce ideas off one another, trying to figure out which approach would work, which wouldn't and why. This has helped me many times to understand the subject matter better conceptually.

It is also wonderful to play to each other's strengths.This was especially evident when I took the integrated science curriculum in freshman year. The questions drew from many different branches of science, and we were all able to contribute in different ways. Having a background in physics, I would always take the asymptotic cases, the biologists would try to make sense on a larger picture and the mathematicians would check for rigor.

In all science classes, while it is required for your work to be your own, instructors encourage, and often even pursue, the students to attend such problem-solving sessions and share ideas, concerns and questions. And students love attending these sessions, or working together in self-organized sessions, as otherwise they might hit a wall when tackling a problem unless someone nudged them in a particular direction. Nobody in a position to help me has ever denied my request for assistance with a problem, or notes or anything else.

In all my classes where we would be assigned projects, group work has always been highly appreciated by the instructors, whether in philosophy, computer science or history. Often, group projects go beyond the requirements of the course when some of the members of the group are incredibly passionate about the project and it catches on. This has led to some very memorable computer science and art projects that have become known to the larger student body, including many apps and art installations. In fact, you can even collaborate on independent work to produce joint-theses or papers.

I like to say that I have learned as much from my peers at Princeton as I have from my professors, and I strongly believe in that statement. One of the greatest things about studying at Princeton has been the opportunity to interact and work with so many amazing individuals, and learning from these individuals inspires me to work harder and understand the material better every day.

Last we left off in this awesome chapter of my education, I had told you all about my class on "Olmec Art", which I started taking because of my job at the museum. (Speaking of the museum, I’m giving a tour on April 28 for Princeton Preview at 2 p.m. If you’ll be on campus, come say hi to me!!!)

If you haven’t seen that post, I started working at the museum my freshman year, and fell in love with one object of Olmec origin, “Kneeling Lord with Toad Incised on his Head.” I joined the class about Olmec art to learn more about this piece at the beginning of this semester.

A few awesome things have transpired since then.

First, I got to hold the “Kneeling Lord” figurine that I raved about last time. I fan-girled. A lot. It was indescribably cool to be able to get up close and personal with something that, until then, I only got to look at behind glass.

And all that was just the first part in the list of exciting things going on right now in that class. 

Last Sunday, we took a trip to New York City to go see museums and galleries that house nice collections of Olmec material. We went to the Museum of Natural History, the MET and to a private collection. At the private collection, we had an opportunity to talk to the collector, see her art and were each assigned a piece to research for a final project.

Tonight, just before starting this post, I must have walked up and down the stairs in the art library on campus about 15 times getting books to start the research process. But, in doing so, I found things out about an object that I had never known. We weren’t given a fact sheet to accompany our piece, so we just had to flip through catalogues, find pictures that matched our objects and research backwards from that point.

And guess what? The piece I have is related in style to my oh-so-favorite “Kneeling Lord.” It’s kind of funny how because of that piece, I found it important to join the class, and now, I am finishing up my class writing a report (kind of) about it. 

That works out nicely :)

 

After what has doubtless felt like a long spring, March 31 has finally come and gone. For many of you, this means that you now know where you’ll be headed for college. A lucky number of you will be headed to Princeton—but even for those going elsewhere, you are on the cusp of embarking on some of the most exciting years of your life. Here are some of my thoughts as you begin to navigate the whirlwind few months you have left before summer.

First, spend some time carefully thinking about your college choice. Talk to your friends, family and teachers about your options; having multiple perspectives is always better than merely having one. Visit campuses if you can, talk to students if you know any and really try to look beyond a school’s website; often, the most useful information comes from the unlikeliest places. At the same time, though, avoid having this decision overwhelm your life. The hard part of the college admissions process is already behind you, and in my experience at least, people invariably end up happiest where they ultimately choose to go to school.

On the issue of the dreaded senioritis, resist the tendency to bow out of academics. You’ve made it through most of high school and, for a number of reasons, it’s worth finishing as strong as you started. First, the teachers who’ve worked so hard to mentor you over the past four years want to see you succeed—in fact, in some international systems (like the International Baccalaureate), the congruency of your achieved and predicted scores might even affect the credibility of their future recommendations. You’ve doubtless worked hard to earn the respect of your school and academic mentors; use these last few months to leave them with a lasting and positive impression.

There’s also a pragmatic side to this, and I think you’ll find that finishing high school ambitiously will prove useful in your first few months at college. Starting university can be stressful, and you don’t want to be spending hours holed up in your room teaching yourself material that you neglected to learn at the end of senior year.

Moving on though, as the year draws nearer to a close, be sure to step back and take stock of your surroundings. It can be easy to take your high school friends and hometown experiences for granted, but you shouldn’t. In all likelihood, your life is going to change radically once you start college, and you may very well find that you sometimes miss the relative simplicity of senior year. You’ll certainly miss the people. This isn’t to say that you’ll entirely lose touch with home once you head off for college, but it’s worth being intentional about how you spend the final months of what has doubtless been a formative four years.

Part of this has to do with gratitude. Make sure to say thank you to everyone who helped you get through high school. In spite of your best intentions, it will be difficult to stay in touch with teachers and mentors once you move away from home. Take them out for coffee, drop them a note or simply take time to tell them how much you’ve appreciated their guidance. You’d be surprised how rare of an occurrence this really is. If you had interviewers for your college applications, shoot them a message of thanks as well. To this day, I continue to correspond with my Princeton interviewer, and I've found it uniformly refreshing to have someone to call upon for advice with a bit more perspective.

Beyond the school year, though, this summer will arrive faster than you know it, and you should start thinking about what you’ll do right now. For many of you, the summers of high school were largely occupied with camps, programs and part-time jobs. Unsurprisingly, the periods between the years of college are likely to get similarly filled with employment or academics of one type or another. In some sense, this is really the most boundless summer that you’ll have for some time, so you should make full use of it. Whether it’s taking a meandering road trip across the country, conquering the entirety of Proust’s "In Search of Lost Time," or simply spending more time with your family before moving away, have a clear plan in mind. As tempting as it is to spend months aimlessly hanging around the local shopping mall with friends or playing video games in your basement, these aren’t good uses of a summer that otherwise has so much potential.

In a similar vein, it’s probably a pretty good time to set goals for the next four years, too. Once you finally arrive on campus, you’ll probably find yourself spending a lot of time adjusting to the new context. At Princeton, orientation week can feel like trying to drink out of a fire hose—so much to do, with so little time to do it. While you still have the mental space to think carefully about what you expect to get out of college, consider making a list of concrete things you hope to accomplish. While these will inevitably change once you start to experience the university landscape for yourself, having an idea of how you want to shape your experience will invariably prove helpful as you’re deciding how to get involved freshman fall. 

As a sophomore in the A.B. program at Princeton, it was time. This spring, my inbox has been flooding with emails detailing how and when I will declare my major and enter the newest stage of my Princeton career: being an upperclassman. And this month, I was indeed quite excited to officially pick my department. During my first two years here, I took a pretty wide variety of classes that helped me determine my interests more concretely, but I envisioned myself majoring in French even as I applied to Princeton. While I changed my mind (often multiple times) about many other academic endeavors (including, but not limited to, becoming an anthropologist and being pre-med), wanting to major in the French department here has always been a certainty for me.

Needless to say, I was thrilled to enter the program this month. During the first two weeks of April, all of the departments held open houses - usually, in typical Princeton fashion, involving a free lunch or at least fancy snacks - where we could go to find out more about the faculty and courses offered within each department. Then, current students from each department held an open house on a Saturday for the sophomores where we could ask our peers about their experiences and perspectives about each department.

And then? It was the week of truth. After meeting with our departmental representatives and getting two forms signed, we had seven days and one simple click of a button. Then we were welcomed into our newest campus families!

For me, officially becoming a French major generated a brief adrenaline rush and merited right off the bat a text to my parents and a Facebook status. But I know that it will now mean the opportunity to do independent work and to start focusing my class choices more closely around my interests. At my meeting, I was also assigned a junior paper advisor who will help me begin my research work as a student here. To be honest, I’m a bit nervous about beginning the second half of my Princeton career and the research work that it brings with it, but for now I am excited and am looking forward to benefitting from the support of my new department on campus.

One of the most surprising pockets of linguistic diversity I have encountered is actually in the heart of suburban New Jersey: Princeton University.

I ended last post about classes with a little illustration of studious note-taking. 

Just in case you are wondering, 

I not only go to class, I pay attention and take good notes! In this post, let me give you some thoughts on my experiences with notes. 

I definitely can't speak to all classes and disciplines, but hopefully this will give you one perspective. Since notes really depend on class size:

• For smaller seminars and precepts, I usually get a feel for what is appropriate, depending on the professor and the type of information the seminar revolves around. 
• If it's a discussion-heavy class or precept, taking extensive notes may not even be necessary! It might just be better to be fully engaged in the discussion.
• For larger lecture classes, it's usually pretty clear that I shouldn't be engaged in conversation. Actually, I should probably be listening and trying to retain what the professor is saying, and taking notes helps this!

There are a couple of mediums for note-taking, the first being good old

Actually, I usually prefer pencils, mostly because mistakes and I are old friends.

If I can record enough information by hand, I'll cut out the distraction of a laptop and go with pencil and paper. Especially in courses where I don't need every detail, handwritten notes often help me choose to record only the most crucial or interesting bits of information. I find my English classes usually fall in this pen and paper category.

Of course, cutting out distractions does not mean there are no doodles. I went through a few of my notebooks and discovered 

I am particularly fond of drawing the backs of people's heads. 

Also this guy showed up a couple times. I'm not entirely sure from where, but I think I like him. 

If I'm in a class that goes quickly, or one that I know it is helpful to have more extensive notes, I bust out my

​In most of my larger lecture classes so far, the professors have been just fine with students using computers. The amazing Professor Nicole Shelton, who taught my PSY 252: "Social Psychology" course, once described her view in front of the McCosh 50 lecture hall as looking over a sea of glowing, white apples.

I've sat next to more than a few Facebookers and online-shoppers, and was introduced to Buzzfeed by creeping on a neighbor in my fall freshman seminar. My friend Alissa even reported once seeing a girl in front of her reading entries on this "Speaking Of Princeton" blog. I'm not going to lie; it is easy to get distracted with a laptop. Professors who allow them do request you use them solely for taking notes though, so it's respectful to everyone to use them for focused note-taking.

Actually, in many cases you shouldn't need to frantically write down everything. Many instructors will put their lecture slides up on Blackboard, the course management system Princeton uses as an online hub for things like class material and precept posting 

If you miss something, or want to revisit an image from lecture, you can find the presentation after class! Not all courses have this option, though. As Professor Bendixen, my professor for "Science Fiction", said paradoxically on the first day of class, "I don't use audio/visual aids; I don't believe in technology." It is an excellent course. 

By the way, taking notes by laptop became infinitely more satisfying when I discovered the note-taking option in Word. It (kind of) makes you feel like you are taking notes on paper, not a screen! And then it outdoes real life by letting you change your workspace with the click of a button:

For example, 

SO! Those are the main methods of taking notes: using paper or using your laptop.

However, I thought I should mention I have seen some people simply using their minds.

I've seen them here and there; under the voice of a lecturer, as the hall rustles with the clattering of keys and the scratching of pencils, they sit calmly. They are unrestrained by papers or power cords. They are pure. Are they that confident in their mental powers? Do they just not care? They just... listen. 

I am definitely not one of those people, so props to them! Really, it comes down to the nature of the class and how you learn and listen best. Personally, I love writing and recording things, plus it also just anchors my focus to have something visual in front of me. Also, I think it's worth mentioning this TIME article.

SO, 

I can say these were good for my information retention.

As this bearded guy is probably thinking,

YAY! 

I never realized sticking so staunchly to my major would compel me so strongly to go outside of the box. I can sometimes be a one-track kind of person, and as such every semester I’ve taken a psychology course or two in an effort to keep up a sense of consistency and common thread. This has been a rewarding experience, but I am aware that this attitude could have been enormously limiting. Luckily for me, the diversity within the psychology department doesn't let me hide behind my major. The options that I have been given in the context of my field of interest have exposed me to opportunities that I may have otherwise been too shy to consider.

For example, last night, at first to my horror, the graduate student leading the lab for my "Neural Networks" class (computer models of brain activity, pretty cool stuff) announced that we would be writing our own code within the neural network software that we use. The software's main point is to build a bunch of layers that process information and attempt to simulate brain behavior within that framework. All of the basic commands in the program are already displayed as a series of buttons. That doesn’t mean it’s easy or intuitive for me, but I've become pretty comfortable with the way the software is laid out by this point. 

BUT…if you want to get fancy, which apparently they think I want, you can abandon the pre-made settings and go behind the scenes. This allows you to get more creative in designing a project, which I am going to be doing later this semester, rather than just running prepackaged simulations as we have been doing so far in lab. And so, last night I did some magic and turned a bunch of I-don’t-know-computer-jargon-but-it-looked-like-letters-and-numbers-to-me into something concrete. And it felt pretty good.

The decision to expose myself to computer science has been the ultimate struggle for me. As you may have gathered, it’s certainly not an area in which I feel at home. This terrain feels foreign to me, I won't lie.  I am just not a quantitative person.  

But I want to model brain behavior, because that’s awesome. And I think it’s even more awesome that I’m picking up some computer science along the way, because that is not something I thought I was cut out for.

To my pleasant surprise, so far, so good.  

Over the years, I’ve had so many people ask me what it’s like to be at Princeton. That’s a huge question, and a terribly complex one, but oftentimes it’s followed up with things like: “Is everyone busy all the time?” "Are the classes super hard?" “Do you ever get time to relax?”

My answer has always been, "Princeton is what you make of it”. I don’t think there is any one typical experience at Princeton; it really is unique for every individual, and you have a lot of say in how your day-to-day life will look. And it is very likely that your Princeton experience will look very different from semester to semester and year to year. 

So what is it like to be at Princeton? I won’t get into any of the complexities and intricacies of being a student here, but I can provide you with a quick overview of what my daily life here on campus has been via quick descriptions of my weekly schedule over the last four spring semesters.

Freshman year: 

I took four classes: Gen Chem, an introductory molecular biology class, microeconomics, and French. I had two to three weekly lectures and a precept per class, plus a lab for mol bio and chem. It made for a busy semester, but one that is pretty typical for a freshman pre-med. I also was on the lightweight crew team, so would have practices from 4:30-6:30 every day. Thankfully, Princeton blocks out that time period for athletic practices so no student-athlete should ever have to choose between attending class or attending practice; unfortunately, many interesting guest speakers and other activities fall during that time period, too. On a typical day, I would wake up around 8 or 9 a.m., grab breakfast with my other pre-med roommates before our classes, attend class or work during the day, eat dinner with teammates after practice, and spend the evenings finishing up homework. I always set aside Friday evenings for something more fun and relaxing; Saturdays I often had races, and Sundays I spent doing work (although my residential college adviser always held a Sunday night study break to look forward to!) 

Sophomore year: 

This was probably my easiest semester, although I was finishing up organic chemistry, probably the most dreaded pre-med class of all. There's a big difference between sophomore and freshman year, I think, in that you finally feel as though you really understand how Princeton works. Sophomore spring is that perfect time where you've really gotten the hang of things, but you haven't yet started your independent work. I took my first departmental that semester, "Animal Behavior," and decided that I loved the quirky and fun ecology and evolutionary biology (EEB) department. I also took a theology class (REL 263), which I elected to PDF (this just means that I took it with the pass/D/fail option) because it was such a new, but super interesting, topic to me. I also worked as an EMT during this semester after completing the New Jersey certification course in the fall, so I spent around 30 hours every month volunteering for Princeton First Aid and Rescue. I also had just gotten into my eating club, Cap and Gown, so was getting to know a bunch of new faces and form wonderful new friendships. 

Junior year: 

Junior year I was studying abroad in Kenya with the EEB department, so my day-to-day life looked completely different from any other semester. I took a series of four three-week long classes on topics ranging from African mammals to the conservation of African landscapes to tropical agriculture. We'd wake up at around 7 a.m. every day with the sun, spend the day doing field studies or traveling, and come home in the evenings to relax and hang out. I had maybe 20 hours of lectures in total over the entire semester, instead of 20 hours of lectures every week. I climbed Mt. Kenya over spring break, met some of the most wonderful people, and got a glimpse into a land and culture I never thought I would see. It was an incredible (and surreal) experience. 

Senior year: 

While the majority of my friends are in just two classes, I'm currently enrolled in three to finish up pre-med and global health and health policy requirements. I'm taking the second semester of introductory physics, a graduate-level seminar in epidemiology, and a MOL class called "Infection: Biology, Burden, and Disease." In addition to this, I also work as an intramural supervisor and as a residential college adviser, which takes up around 4-6 hours over the course of two or three weeknights. My biggest worry besides classes right now is the thesis. As one of my good friends keeps reminding me, we have less than 50 days to go....! And, of course, figuring out the next steps beyond Princeton.