Last week, I was granted funding for an eight-week summer research project through Pomona’s SURP! SURP (Summer Undergraduate Research Program) is a means to allow students to conduct focused, long-term undergraduate projects to help heighten students’ understandings of their academic interests. This is a wonderful and accessible program in that it makes it possible for students to become experts in a sliver of their respective fields and it is open to all academic subjects. As a Philosophy major, I’m personally appreciative of that, and it’s exciting that Pomona supports projects ranging from Biology to Religious Studies (I know students doing both this summer!)
My project specifically will focus on various types of neuroatypical perception and how individuals with neurotypical perception can know about their sensory experiences despite an epistemic gap. I am very excited to begin research this summer, because it will allow me the opportunity to learn in-depth about this question I’m very interested in, which I also hope will inspire my thesis (to be started in Fall 2013.)
This is also wonderful news because my summer is officially all booked between this and my Thai video project through PBI. The second half of my last summer was admittedly sparse while I prepared to study abroad and spent time with family, which was pleasant, but left me longing to do something new and productive and exciting. Now that I know I’ll have a packed summer ahead of me, I can’t wait for it to begin!