I'm spending this summer working at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and staying on Princeton's campus.

Hello, readers!

Imagine: a foreign language professor is trying to explain to you a complex grammatical point about how the endings of words change depending not only on those words’ parts of speech, but also on how they’re being used in a sentence, and that you also have to keep in mind the order of the words in that sentence, not forgetting to factor in whether or not said words are definite or indefinite, or apparently indefinite except that they’re part of a construction that arbitrarily makes them definite because grammarians say so.

Now imagine that lesson is taking place in said foreign language, that the professor is a native speaker with a native (and seemingly impenetrable) accent, and that you do not know half of the grammatical terms they’re using.

The end result looks something like this (and I swear this photo was not staged):

I’m spending my summer in the town of Ibri, Oman, at the Noor Majan Training Institute, where I’m studying Arabic courtesy of the Critical Language Scholarship Program of the U.S. Department of State. My description was, of course, a bit overblown, but there have certainly been days here where I’ve felt a bit out of my depth, whether linguistically, scholastically or culturally.

In all seriousness, the learning curve going into an Arabic immersion classroom was steep, but it improved quickly. Our instructor, Ustaadha Habiba, calibrated her teaching style to our level, and we learned the necessary classroom vocab (and got accustomed to her accent) by sheer exposure and repetition. By the third or fourth week, moments of utter confusion were few and far between, replaced by a sense of basic understanding, punctuated by moments of excitement when we reached a sort of collective “breakthrough” moment.

Four hours seems like a lot of time every day to spend on a single subject, but we mix things up. Every class starts with a 15-minute taqdiim, or presentation, from one of the students on a subject of their choosing. Then, we usually progress into a lesson of some sort about a grammar concept, or the use of a new phrase, construction, or set of vocabulary, which we follow with conversations designed to activate what we’ve just learned. We end class most days with a debate or discussion centered around something from the news media, which is also enlightening because Ustaadha Habiba will talk about Omani perceptions of the issues at hand.

Although it proved difficult at first, having a native speaker conduct the class wholly in Arabic is probably the best part of the program. Comprehension improves through exposure, and I’m exposed to 20 classroom hours every week. It’s at times mentally exhausting, but the rewards are clear now whenever I can get through a conversation with Omanis—be they teachers, taxi drivers or young people—without asking them to repeat themselves or clarify for my clunky Western ears.

Until my next post, when I’ll talk about Omani culture and our travels around the country!

This evening, I’m sitting on an overlook in Södermalm, a neighborhood of Stockholm. Across the water sits City Hall, the stately red brick building famous for being the venue of the annual Nobel Prize banquet. The building and the award program it houses, often considered the pinnacle achievement for those working in the life sciences, literature or economics, brings forth images of the upper echelons of academia, of brilliant professors and expensive labs. Though the number of Nobel laureates employed by a university is often touted as the metric for measuring their quality, my preparations for my summer abroad have shown me that what truly makes a learning environment remarkable, such as that found at Princeton, is a faculty and student body that is enthusiastic, open-minded and approachable.

It was back in late March when I received an email from the International Internship Office informing me that I had been awarded a scholarship to spend eight weeks of my summer working for a member of the Swedish Parliament in Stockholm. My summer work would include conducting research and facilitating a seminar about macroeconomic policy. I was advised to start thinking about the project, as it was completely up to me to choose the topic. 

Realizing that my knowledge of Scandinavian economic policy consisted of little more than the smattering of information I’d picked up from The Economist, I decided to call in the big guns. I fired off a few emails to Princeton professors with expertise in the area.

I was surprised by the response rate–all the professors emailed me back almost immediately, and by the end of the week, I walked out of my fourth meeting with an accumulated five pages of topic proposals. Each professor was incredibly helpful and took the time to explain the background and significance of suggested topics (who knew that a recent surge in Swedish nationalism might lead to tougher immigration laws that could threaten entrepreneurial growth in the country). I had walked into meetings with these well-established economists and political scientists completely directionless, with nothing but a vague understanding of Sweden’s “middle way.” I walked out with a firm grasp of many of the issues facing the country.

It wasn’t just professors who helped prepare me for a summer abroad. In May, I was introduced to Johanna, a Princeton senior from southern Sweden. I was immediately blown away by how enthusiastic and helpful she was in offering advice. She quickly arranged a dinner for me and a few other Princeton students who would be spending the summer in Sweden. She came to the dinner with cultural information she thought would be important for us to know. She told us to “never, ever wear your shoes inside someone’s house,” and that “you have to try Kalles–fish eggs in a tube–but only once. Then never again.” She then turned over a contact list of her childhood friends who now live in Stockholm and who had already agreed to show us the city.

Finally, she invited all of us–four students who she had only just met–for a weekend trip to her house in Southern Sweden. It was an offer we enthusiastically accepted, and a trip we took during one of our first weeks in Sweden. It was a fantastic time. She took us swimming in the North Sea, rappelling on the Kullaberg peninsula, and even hiking through the forest to visit the illegally constructed, interactive sculpture, Nimis. The trip was an amazing opportunity not only to get to see a different part of Sweden, but also a chance to learn about Swedish social and economic issues from an entirely new angle.

While the Stockholm City Hall is a striking building, and while I’m sure the Nobel banquet is spectacular, I realize that any significant evaluation of a university based on such lofty criteria as the number of noble laureates it employs is almost useless. Being around faculty members who will respond to a cold call email and welcome me into their offices and explaining the ins and outs of industrial conglomeration, or around students willing to spend hours helping me translate Swedish political websites is just so much more important.

Happy summer from New York City!! I hope you all are doing awesome and have been enjoying fast-flying golden months of the year.

Martin A. Dale '53 Summer Award

So at the end of last school year, I applied for one of the summer Dale Awards. It's a scholarship that encourages students to pursue a personal project, something you love or have always wanted to do. Rather than stipulating a certain final required outcome, the award is more about the project experience and the fruit of growth and exploration that blooms from it. Basically, the Dale spurs you to go and live the summer of your dreams. Not bad, not bad.

The Proposal

I have been fortunate enough to be one of the 15 sophomores taking this summer to pursue a project with the help of the Dale Award. My proposal entailed writing and illustrating adventures about growing up as one of six siblings in Hawaii and the Middle East.

Being a huge fan of that famous novel about the Gilbreth family, I entitled my proposal "Cheaper by the Half-Dozen." You don't know how long I had waited to use that title. (Years. For real.)

The proposal was spurred by a few things

• I really, really love my family and could write about them forever.
• My older siblings are scattering around the world, my parents and little sisters are now living in a whole different continent, there are new people living in our old home in Oahu, and I don't know if I'll ever make it back to Bahrain. My childhood was about as awesome as childhoods go, and knowing I can't go back to these places and times is kind of bittersweet

This is the most depressing thing ever, Aliisa! 

But the great thing is, it's not. Memory can be looked at as sweet past melted into nothingness, or as a celebration of an awesome backstory that brings me to who I am today and will forever fuel who I am becoming. And that's something to celebrate.

So what I wanted to do this summer was to write, collect and illustrate stories and memories of growing up. My proposal placed me in New York City, where I could take courses at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) as I illustrated stories this summer and in the days ahead. Plus, what better place for creative inspiration than the Big Apple?

The Project

While I initially set about trying to do longer narratives and involved illustrations, a thousand other details and moments would come pouring in every time I tried. I found myself stifling the little things for the sake of clarity, but pretty soon realized this defeated my purpose. The past come in snapshots, instances and images, scattered pieces of blue and the smell of sun-baked brick.This project was not to shape my life into a comprehensive arc, but rather to gather memories pure and uncontrived. 

I see it like this: My wealth of memory comes not in one giant check, but in a whole lot of bright, winking coins.

And I want to collect them all.

So I've since set up a site to post writing and drawings and make it easy for my family members to submit their own memories ("drop a coin in the bucket"). Just about every day, I've been writing and illustrating my own entries or ones submitted by my family.

Some are stories, some are recollections about a single object, some about the general feel of a place. A few sample topics:

Stories and memories centered around the box turtles who lived in our little backyard (we had nine of them at one point).

Stories and memories about playing in the tide pools, each their own little universe of life for us to explore.

Classic Lee family stories, like that time our neighbor Bobby snuck through the back fence pretending to be a monster and startling my brother Anders so badly, he beat Bobby over the head with a giant Omagle stick. Good times, good times!

The process has been fantastic. I get to draw and write with no pressure to make things perfect, but with a motivation  to capture the feeling remembered. All eight of us have been getting a kick out of reminiscing and recollecting. It's really special to take this pause in my life, somewhere between childhood and full-fledged adulthood, and lovingly record and illustrate some very blessed, very fun days. 

The Classes

Part of my project entailed taking classes at the Cartooning and Illustration department of the School of Visual Arts to supplement my abilities in art. There were some adventures at the start of the summer with course offerings, but the classes I've ended up with have been perfect.

One of the classes is taught by Tristan Elwell, who actually illustrated the cover to some of my favorite books growing up. The course serves as a comprehensive rundown of basically everything art, from perspective to the human form, to color to composition and storytelling. It's designed to be helpful at all levels, from people who are just beginning to dabble in the art, to professionals who want to fill in gaps in their ability or sharpen their knowledge. In the class, I've done a lot of really helpful theory and figure drawing in pencil, while applying our assignments to digital art.

The second class focuses on the art of the graphic novel, taught by cartoonist and illustrator C.M. Butzer. The class focuses on aspects of comics or visual storytelling, a look into the industry and the creation of our own short comics under the instruction and guidance of our instructor and peers. I haven't done much in comic form before, so this was a really nice way to poke my head into that world. My project is a little fiction about a fisherman's daughter who finds herself in a desert kingdom. I wonder where the inspiration for those worlds came from?

Both of these classes have been amazing not only for the skills I've been learning, but for the people I've been able to meet. Since the courses are SVA's summer continuing education program, I've been able to take class with a whole bunch of people whose ages and professions differ from mine in a way that you just don't get in college. I've learned a lot from my "classmates," and I don't know when I'd be able to make these kinds of connections and friendships otherwise.

More to Come

That's been my ongoing Dale summer project! Stay tuned for the second half of this little summer update.

Greetings from London! As Tigers and Tigresses travel all over the world during summer, I’d like to offer my personal tale on connecting with alumni for career advice while abroad.

A one-click search on Alumni Careers Network (ACN) reveals 60 alumni currently working in the UK. I found two working in the Greater London area in the management consulting industry, which is what I’m considering. I carefully crafted two emails asking each of them if we could meet up for a coffee chat to discuss my interest in consulting, and within a day both have replied. Now this might sound astounding to you that busy Princeton alumni would respond to a sophomore’s email so promptly, but know that ACN is an online database on which more than 4,000 alumni around the world voluntarily registered to assist students in their career choice.  Lesson No.1? Alumni on ACN volunteered themselves to help, so don’t be afraid to reach out.

One of the two alumni, Mr. Ulanov ’78 was out of the country, so instead of a coffee chat, we conversed over emails. Mr. Ulanov advised that rather than becoming a management consulting generalist right out of college, I go into industry first and later switch to consulting and consult on that particular industry. He believes that for recent college grads, first-hand experience in industry is much more valuable than knowledge of the overall landscape that consulting offers. I often hear people say that consulting is a good out-of-college option as it exposes young people to a wide variety of industries, so it’s really interesting to hear Mr. Ulanov advise otherwise. This is an ongoing debate that I’ll surely carry on into my further career search.

Ms. Murphree ’04 and I met up for coffee, and her stories confirmed what I learned about consulting from second-hand sources—she enjoys working with driven, smart and interesting colleagues, and seeing the insights they bring to clients. She also commented that when consulting firms recruit undergraduates, they look at their potential, not their existing business knowledge. As much as I love Princeton’s liberal arts education, occasionally I feel like I’m missing out on the “practical” part of my education, so it was really reassuring to hear Ms. Murphree say that an undergrad experience at Princeton should be focused on building critical thinking skills, and not to worry, that “practical” knowledge will come with on job training later on.

This is true for almost all things at Princeton, but seems particularly appropriate when it comes to connecting with alumni: There are so many people willing to help you out there. Sometimes all it takes is a little initiative.

Happy summer!

This summer, I'm back at Princeton, completing an internship at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL).  One of the main goals of PPPL is to make fusion energy a reality. The mainstream fusion reactor concept is a tokamak, a donut-shaped device that uses twisted circular magnetic fields to confine its plasma so that it can be heated to fusion-relevant energies. While tokamak research is advanced, the machines have the disadvantage of being huge, expensive and immensely technologically complicated.

So this summer I'm working with Samuel Cohen, a professor who researches field reversed configuration reactors (FRCs). An FRC uses a different magnetic field setup than a tokamak, which allows it to be a much smaller and simpler device.

 

This simplicity has caused the FRC to attract significant research interest. For example, Tri Alpha Energy and Helion Energy, two private fusion companies, use FRCs as their major reactor concept.  

But FRC research is still young, especially compared with tokamak research, so there is a lot of work to be done. My research this summer involves understanding and optimizing the rotating magnetic fields in the FRC that heat its plasma to temperatures at which fusion can occur. I've only just started my project, but I'm excited for what this summer will bring. Stay tuned for updates!

 

If you’re the sort of person who likes to travel, or hasn’t travelled much but would like to, Princeton has you covered. Princeton students find about ten-and-a-half billion ways to see the country and the world, most often with the help of the school’s incredible resources. I’ve taken advantage of a few—you heard about Paris—but at this moment alone I’ve got friends in Galway, Azerbaijan, Paris, Ecuador, Israel, London, Nigeria, Beijing, and Morocco.

Travel, like many of man’s other lofty pursuits like symphony orchestra, or twerking, has a discernible rhythm.

The count starts slowly, gradually. Subtle notes begin a week out from the trip. A few extra toiletries appear. Perhaps I don’t wear clothes that I know I’ll want to bring so they won’t have to be washed again. The controlled chaos of my room becomes gradually ordered as space is made for the looming organizational storm.

A few days out, the beat quickens. I make an official “List of Things That Must Be Done,” which comes with an implied “or else.” What “else” might happen isn’t ever really clear, but my mother has imbued me with a distinct sense of terror toward the world. If I don’t pack my flashlight, there could be a massive power outage. If I don’t bring antibiotics, I’ll surely come down with a life-threatening strain of the flu borne by the desert sands. If I don’t prepare a vial of holy water, then I’ll be defenseless against inevitable zombie hoards. The Boy Scout motto states, “Be prepared”; the Beth Lawrence motto continues, “…for every possible apocalypse.”

By the eve of departure, I’ve taken care of the initial List’s items, but 20 new last-minute errands have refilled it, a hydra in notepad form. The metronome beats louder. I pick up dry cleaning. I buy funky new argyle socks because the gray ones my sister got me for Christmas (Killer present, sis!) are boring. I grab two new sets of in-ear headphones because the dog recently acquired a funny but also kind of gross taste for earwax. I arrive at CVS right before they close, stopping the disgruntled worker as he’s locking the doors so I can purchase shaving cream.

During the late-night rush to pack, the rhythm becomes a gallop. I have an uncanny ability to pack bags right up to the weight limit (48 pounds this time, a small victory). I inevitably think I haven’t packed enough, and will inevitably wonder why I brought half this stuff in two weeks.

And then I am done, except that I can’t sleep. This always happens, whether I’m coming back to Nashville or Princeton or going someplace else, but it’s particularly pronounced tonight. The metronome should have stopped by now, but it’s still ticking. Ticking. Ticking. Nothing remains to do, but sheer inertia keeps it running until I’m finally en route.

Takeoff. The metronome stops. The buzz of the plane engine lulls me to sleep.

Four airports and a brief stop in D.C. later, I’m in Ibri, Oman for a summer of Arabic study. More on that soon!

Okay, so maybe the title makes me seem crazier than I really am. Backtrack. As you may remember, this summer I am set to volunteer at the Indian Institute of Cerebral Palsy in Kolkata, India ...