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As students pursue a bachelor's degree in physics, they may ponder over which area to specialize in, such as theory, computation, or experiment. Often students develop preferences and dislikes, but it's unclear when this preference solidifies during their undergraduate experiences. To get a better understanding, we interviewed eighteen physics majors who were at different stages of their degree regarding their interest in theory, computation, and experimental methods. Out of the eighteen students, we chose to analyze only nine students who rated computation and theory the lowest. Our analysis did not include interest in experiment because the ratings were less negative. We used Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) and Lucidchart to analyze students' responses and create individual graphical representations of the influences for each student. Through this, we uncovered how various factors such as learning experiences, self-efficacy, and outcome expectations influenced their low interest in a particular method. We found that lack of knowledge and experience is often the main reason why self-efficacy was lower. Students' lack of interest is also influenced by negative outcome expectations (e.g, math-intensive and a bad work-life balance) more than other SCCT factors. Our findings could help physics departments and educators identify positive and negative factors that could lead to a more motivating and inclusive physics curriculum. 

In the summer of 2020, as COVID-19 limited in-person research opportunities and created additional barriers for many students, institutions either canceled or remotely hosted their research experience for undergraduates (REU) programs. The present qualitative phenomenographic study was designed to explore some of the possible limitations, challenges, and outcomes of this remote experience. Overall, 94 interviews were conducted with paired participants; mentees (𝑁=10) and mentors (𝑁=8) from six different REU programs. By drawing on cultural-historical activity theory as a framework, our study uncovers some of the challenges mentees faced while pursuing their research objectives and academic goals. These challenges included motivation, limited access to technology at home, limited communication among REU students, barriers in mentor-mentee relationships, and differing expectations about doing research. Despite the challenges, all mentees reported that this experience was highly beneficial. Comparisons between the outcomes of these remote REUs and published outcomes of in-person undergraduate research programs reveal many similar benefits, including student integration into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics culture. Our study suggests that remote research programs could be considered a means to expand access to undergraduate research experiences even after COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted.