Ei! My name is Antônio Jorge Medeiros Batista Silva (yes—four last names!) and I'm a '25 from Governador Valadares, Brazil. My journey to Dartmouth has crossed two continents, three countries, and over 10 schools—and I'm a strong believer that everyone's path to the Big Green was unique in a way. At Dartmouth, I am interested in studying Linguistics, Native American & Indigenous Studies, and Spanish. I am really passionate about social justice, learning languages, and the oxford comma!
This class is an introduction to the Spanish minor and major courses and, although I did not expect to particularly like it, it not only turned out to be my favourite but it made me start considering a degree in the department!
In this class, we analysed different productions of Latinx American theatre. Prof. Analola Santana was probably the best person I met this year at Dartmouth. Being her student was a very important experience as I try to navigate my potential majors and minors.
In this class, I was able to carve time out of my busy Dartmouth schedule to study and learn my Indigenous language: Krenak. With the help of Prof. Gokke, all students were encouraged to develop a final project that spoke to their community's needs for language learning and revitalisation. It was an extremely important class for me, not only academically, but also for my personal healing process.
I had the honour of spending my sophomore fall in Madrid, taking part in the Spanish FSP. There, Prof. Martín was not only a great professor, responsible for my favourite lecture of the program, but also an incredible company throughout our classes and in-country trips. Great way to wrap up my Spanish minor, honestly!
This was my second class in the NAIS department, and thus it took me one step closer to wrapping up my major. Nonetheless, it was Prof. Powell's genuine charisma and caring personality that made it my favourite of the term!
This course was definitely life changing! Prof. Pochedley, a visiting post-doc of the Potawatomi nation did a great job at keeping the students engaged while teaching us to see the land we inhabit as a source of knowledge and spirituality. In a majority Indigenous classroom, we got to develop individual projects related to our traditional homelands, learning to navigate the world through Native world lenses.
Prof. Gómez is one of those profs I've always wanted to take a class with. His work with the Horror genre in Modern Spanish literatures amazes me, and it was an honour to guide in-class discussions and develop my own research on the themes of science, testimony, and fear.
LING54 is an umbrella course: the actual content of the course may vary each year, but it is the common letter-number code to refer to the course taught abroad by your accompanying Dartmouth Linguistics professor. In this year's Linguistics Foreign Study Program (FSP), LING54 was a 'Language Documentation' class, wonderfully taught by Prof. David Peterson.
Hello again! Antônio here, bringing somewhat of a deeper reflection to today's post. I remember that, as a high school senior, I had my priorities set very clearly when choosing colleges: more than a cool place or cool program, I wanted to be surrounded by cool people. And it should be somewhere I could afford. Impressively, it only took a couple campus tours on YouTube and a little informational session from the Admissions Office for me to decide to give this place a shot. And now, almost four years later, I could not be happier with that choice.
On the note of being surrounded by 'cool people', I know how broad and relative this is as a measure. However, if you know any Dartmouth student at all, you must know what I'm referring to; amongst all my choices, all colleges I could have attended instead, it was while talking to current students in that info session that I realized that only at Dartmouth I would find such a caring and supportive community. Of course, this is not to say that there's no competitiveness or rivalry at Dartmouth—like many other schools, this is something that'll vary by department, friendship circle, class year, and many other factors. For example, I wouldn't know if students studying economics are competitive—I've never even been to one of their classrooms.
What I do know is that, although Dartmouth's name upholds great recognition and can certainly open some doors for you, academics is not everything this place has to offer. Personally, I have never felt like I had to duel a peer to get a professor's seal of approval. Rather, I have felt challenged—by both peers and profs—to do better, to achieve even greater things than I though possible of myself. In summary, I don't feel like I have to prove myself to anyone, but that I can do so if I wish because people here want to see me succeed. And, funny enough, people I've met here have grown so much on me, that I too want them to succeed. That's what Dartmouth is about: a community that has each other's backs, and where bigotry is never accepted.
Dartmouth's liberal arts curriculum pushes students to explore new departments and draw connections between seemingly disparate disciplines. Come explore my Economics, Physics, and Asian, Societies, Cultures, and Languages classes!
