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.
You might not know about this fun fact, but during the 1968 United States general election, a Dartmouth club was the country's first news outlet to announce New Hampshire's winner candidate. To this day, the walls of the Dartmouth College Radio (DCR) station are covered in awards, signs, and other historical artefacts that illustrate our place in history. But, more than anything, radio has been my home away from home for the past two years.
Coming to Dartmouth, I did not expect to be this involved with a club. I knew this place had a thousand options for outside class activities. But, considering how much of a "club freak" I was in high school – in other words, overcommitted haha – I came to college already tired. Honestly, I was looking more forward to my classes than to my clubs when I committed to Dartmouth.
It took very little interaction with the DCR leadership team for me to realise I would be missing out on an amazing opportunity by not joining radio. And so I did. Since my first term at Dartmouth, I've held my show almost every week, getting to share a little bit of my experience and opinions with the outside world. Isn't that crazy?
PCSD (my show) runs every Tuesday at 4pm!
At Dartmouth, it is a common thing to feel isolated from the rest of the world. At least for me, Hanover has become a very comfortable bubble. And, every time I turn on my mics in the radio station, I get to bridge the gap between these two lives I carry inside of me: my Dartmouth self, and my "outside world" self. I have friends from home who religiously tune in to my show just to listen to some of my voice intertwined with my favourite playlists – can you believe that? Radio allows me to be myself, both for my friends here, but also for those around the world.
In the last couple of years, the college has sold our FM anthem, and we've transitioned fully to becoming an online radio. I got to Dartmouth right during this transition period, so I got to experience radio's history being written. When I worked for the 50th year reunion of the class of 1972 last summer, I had the privilege of meeting DCR's co-founder and first general manager. We bonded while – as part of my job guiding them through campus – we did a pitstop in Robinson Hall, our headquarters. Sharing the history of this place with generations of Dartmouth alumni is just one of the super cool aspects of being a radio host.
I have written about being a student worker plenty of times in the past, but I have yet to talk about one of my favorite jobs ever: ticket selling at the Hopkins Center for the Arts.
