Hey everyone! My name is Alexis Colbert and I'm a '19, a senior, with a major in Anthropology and a minor in Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies. I am a Senior Admissions Fellow and the Undergraduate Advisor (UGA) for the Gender Equity Program floor the 2018/19 school year. I have spent three terms abroad throughout my Dartmouth career and worked on a reflective project. In my free time I love to read, drink coffee, work with kids, and explore the arts.
Introduction to Anthropology is a course meant to show students the basics of anthropology along with the core theories. The focus is around the ability to evaluate differences in terms of similarities and vice versa. I took this course the fall of my freshman year with professor Watanabe and absolutely loved it, it's actually what got me to switch over to an anthropology major.
Education and Inequality is a course that explores the effects of schools on society and vice versa, along with inequality within schools and how that can affect people's lives in the long term. This focuses on how race, gender, and socioeconomic class shape, and are shaped, by education. Taking this course, I had never taken a sociology class before, but I loved it. I had already been working with kids back home at this point and coming from a low income, single parent household I had lived some of the situations that we explored in the course.
Forbidden Romance was a chance for me to take a course just because it sounded interesting and I knew the professor. Though she is no longer at Dartmouth, I took this class with Prof. Choi who was an astoundingly sweet woman. Over the course of the term we talked about different types of romance that are considered taboo and "forbidden", why they are considered so, and how romantic taboos can vary from region to region. I had never imagined that I would give a presentation on Fifty Shades of Grey in college...but I did.
Women and the Bible was an exciting course for me because I was also using it as a way to have more input on a topic that I had been thinking about quite a lot: what is the place of women in the bible. The course talks about the representation and treatment of women in the bible, as well as how women interact with the bible and different feminist takes on passages. I think it's a really interesting course whether you're religious or not.
Life in the Anthropocene is a course starts off by asking the questions: what is the Anthropocene and are we indeed in it. From there, the course works to identity the geological and societal consequences of this. Not only did we talk about climate change, but we also talked about how climate change effects groups and how groups can also cause climate change. If this course sounds interesting to you, I also suggest you read the Great Derangement.
In high school I became really interested in art, but when I first came to Dartmouth my freshman year I really lost that. So taking Drawing I was more than getting rid of a distributive requirement for me. It gave me a chance to be in a real studio and pour myself into my artwork. It required a lot of time in the studio, but I think it was definitely worth it!
DartFit was amazing! I took this gym class my sophomore summer, and yes, it was intense, it's a Dartmouth version of CrossFit, but my instructor was amazing. We called her Mad Maddie and she has her own website for personal training. I had taken Insanity with her two terms before. And the coolest part? Professor Hickox, the West House (best house) professor was taking the course as well. I literally worked out with my house professor three times a week.
This was my off term. I took this time to find an internship and that ended up taking me all the way to Kuwait. I worked full time at the American University of Kuwait in the Marketing office, the Office of Student Life, and the Writing Center. For ten weeks I walked to and from work, tutored students, planned events for the university, wrote articles for the website, and transferred digital archives. Being able to see the Middle East from a perspective other than what is covered in Western television was priceless.
Colonialism is not an event, it is a process. For the winter, I decided to escape the Hanover cold and go to New Zealand where it was summer for the anthropology foreign study program (FSP). The course taught by a Dartmouth professor was my favorite by far. Professor Sienna Craig taught the course Colonialism and its Legacies, we also had a teacher's assistant named Grant that attended every lecture, and brought forth readings that I didn't know I needed in my life. Over the course of ten weeks you discuss the lasting effects of colonialism on communities, the prospect of decolonization and what that could mean or look like, and study the colonization of New Zealand.
For the spring I went to Barcelona on the Spanish language study abroad (LSA). During my time there I took a course called History and Culture taught by a faculty member at the University of Barcelona. This course was my favorite because we spent a lot of time talking about art and how it relates to the social and political context of the artist. My favorite artist is Goya, he was a Spanish painter and during this class we spent over a week talking about him in lectures and also saw some of his most famous pieces in person while visiting Madrid.
To complete the major or minor in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies it is required to take a senior seminar in the department. The themes change based on the professor, this fall our theme was Futurisms, but our professor allowed our research projects to be on any topic and range from essays to fiction to art projects. At the end of the term, I had produced a two part project on Black women in young adult vampire novels in the form of a research paper and accompanying multimedia painting. Who said research isn’t fun?
Painting 1 was my second course in the Studio Art Department, the first being Drawing 1. Working with oil paint, we completed a range of paintings over the term geared to teach us about color, edges, and composition, among other things. Professor Enrico Riley was an amazing artist to learn from and often shared with us his philosophy around art, painting, and the relationships between colors. Whether or not I produced exclusively paintings that I felt were aesthetically pleasing, I learned about the theory and process of art making and the influence colors have on one another.
I was still a freshman here at Dartmouth when I took the class Education and Inequality, it was my first, and so far only, sociology class here at Dartmouth. This course was also my first time really thinking about the variety of the black experience on a collegiate level. I had just decided I was going to change my course and make anthropology my major, was excited about what was to come, and thinking deeper about what all I could do with my major because of how the readings in the course along with the focus on producing research and holding interviews inspired me. In high school, research seemed like something you did if you were in the hard sciences or math, not something you did in the social sciences, but my sociology class proved that to be wrong.
Flash forward to this past fall when I was in Salmiya, Kuwait working, and I saw that I had just over a month as a spring break between two foreign study programs. After writing the papers I mentioned before, reading multiple Toni Morrison books, and the work of Anthony Jack, I really wanted to dedicate time to talk about the fact that “black” is not a homogenous term.
Up until this point I had thought that to do undergraduate research in the social sciences, a senior thesis was the only way. The problem was that I didn’t want to do a thesis. It sounded like a long and scary process that I wasn’t sure if I was ready for. News flash: I was wrong.
My roommate talked to me about something called the Student Experiential Learning Fund (SELF). SELF is a program that Dartmouth has for students to do research, internships, conventions and more, that require funding the student doesn’t have, but will advance their academic or professional interests. I saw that I had a few weeks before the application deadline and got working on a budget and research proposal that was later approved. I did anthropology research in four different countries over a period of just over a month--without writing a thesis.
My first location for research was London. I took this shot after having dinner one night while I was walking back to my hostel.
After London, I caught I bus to France where I settled down in Paris for the next six days. Along the River Sienne you have these locks left by couples to represent their love.
Just before ending my research, I had Munich, Germany as my last location. I often would go to Marienplatz in the mornings.
The structure for my research was not set in stone, I knew it would be based on my experience while traveling and use previously published works. Many hours were spent finding and reading research papers to create a bibliography and reading guides on how to take good ethnographic field notes. Each day I would go and explore the cities, trying to meet people and write field notes as I went when something stuck out to me and in the evenings I would go back and journal in detail about the entire day. I’ll be spending time this summer expanding my field notes in to papers and am now contemplating doing an independent study during the year specifically to focus on this research project.
If a thesis isn't the right path for you, don’t let the idea of one keep you from turning your ideas into something more, or keep you from trying to answer your questions. There are various options for funding and research here at Dartmouth and I’m sure that there is one that will work for you!
Now, I am wrapping up my first year at Dartmouth. After reflecting on my experience thus far, I want to offer some advice to prospective and admitted students.
When I applied to college, I was dead set on studying only music and neuroscience. However, I now say go take that course that has nothing to do with your major and maybe find a new passion.
10 weeks, 3 classes, 40 departments and programs, 420 tenured and tenure-track professors—endless possibilities. Here's why I love academics at Dartmouth.
My weeks at Dartmouth are often full of back-to-back events and a constant rush of activity. For me, the best way to quell these negatives is to leave school behind and become one with the trees.
Ever wonder what a typical Dartmouth student's classes look like? Every student's schedule is different, but here's a peek into the four courses I'm taking this term!
