First Post!

Good morning ladies and gentlemen! This blog is a portal into the world of working on a research project as an undergraduate at Rutgers University. Through the good graces of the Aresty Research Center, I have been assigned to a research project currently underway within the Center for European Studies. This type of experience is fairly rare for undergraduates. In most universities, the research teams are staffed by professors and post-doctorates. Any other research tends to be done by graduate students, and undergraduates tend to be locked out of research opportunities.

However, the Aresty Research Center allows professors to submit requests for undergraduate research assistants, and arranges for students to fill those positions if they wish to. I submitted an application, and had the good luck to be assigned to the Center for European Studies. My current project centers on internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Georgia, and how gender affects their experiences as they find ways to survive after being dislocated by war. As this blog continues, you will not only get a better picture of what's going on within the project, but you will also see what sort of assignments Aresty Research Assistants receive.

But for now, you will have to be satisfied with that. This lowly undergraduate has to go to physics lecture x_x Later, dudes!