Hey! I'm excited to welcome you to my blog page! I'm Andrea Agola, a '26 born in Kenya and raised just outside of D.C. As the eldest child of three, I'm the first to go off to college! I'm glad Dartmouth will enable me to explore both the sciences and humanities. Don't even get me started on the numerous extracurriculars that pique my interest, like the Dartmouth Center for Social Impact, research projects and dance groups. Follow along as I navigate this unique college experience!
Academic Program
Sociology major, International Studies Minor, Pre-Med
Favorite Thing Right Now
Studying abroad on the French LSA+ in Toulouse, France!
When I began my first term at Dartmouth, I knew I wanted to explore the French language and culture more after having been a French music and film fan for as long as I can remember. This was an accelerated course that covered French 1 and 2 in one term and offered an exciting and fast-paced atmosphere. The small nature of our class allowed us all to have more speaking time in class from partner activities to performing creative skits. One of the best assignments was a scavenger hunt! I was also able to learn and make a presentation about francophone countries. This class really prompted me to apply for the ‘24 Winter–Toulouse, France Study Abroad which I got accepted into!
This course considers the discipline and political happenings of Black Feminist Thought by highlighting interlocking issues related to gender, sexuality, race, and economics. The professor was amazing! I was always genuinely excited to do her assigned readings/viewings and remember being sad when she canceled class one day (imagine!). I reveled in the thought-provoking, warm, restorative (the list goes on & on) ambience that she fostered. I even took advantage of a cool opportunity that Dartmouth offers, the “Take a Faculty Member out To Lunch” program at Pine Restaurant across from campus. I enjoyed the lovely conversation we had over delicious food. Her class was such a great source of empowerment!
This course examines the epidemiology and social impact of past and present infectious disease epidemics. It was a great and insightful class to take for the Global Health Minor! I had the chance of hearing from many influential guest lecturers like the Former Minister of Health of Rwanda and a key member of the U.S Covid Task Force.
This course explores causes and patterns of global poverty and links this with the urgent need for care and care ethics in our lives and in society broadly. Not only did the class feel like such a caring environment but it was especially interesting because it had a Social Impact Practicum (SIP) component. A SIP is a project-based experiential learning opportunity connecting undergraduate courses at Dartmouth with community needs identified by nonprofit organizations. In other words, a SIP is a real-world project with real-world impact. My SIP was my care work as a UGA within Dartmouth's Residential Life.
My pre-health class for the Summer is Biology 14: Anatomy and Physiology. The class meets three times a week and has a weekly lab like other pre-health classes but this is my first time taking an evening lab session from 6:30 PM - 10:30 PM on Tuesdays. With instruction from Graduate School Teaching Assistants, each week we focus on dissecting different organs and running physiological experiments to understand the function of certain anatomical structures.
After making sure we're following lab safety guidelines of wearing long pants and tying hair back, we put on our white lab coats, gloves and goggles. We get to work with both live and fixed animal tissues, carefully dissecting and observing specimens to see how structure and function go hand in hand in various physiological systems. These systems include the Nervous system, Sensory system, Visual system, Muscle physiology, bone systems, Endocrine system, and Cardiovascular physiology, Respiratory system Gastrointestinal system, Reproduction system and Thermoregulation. Yeah…if that sounded like a lot, it definitely is a lot of interesting stuff to memorize and learn.
So far we've dissected sheep brain, leech spinal cord and cow heart. A big part of the class is comparison between different animal organs (like shark vs chicken eyeballs) or between human and animal organs.
Here's a picture that my lab partner took of me holding our dissected cow heart!
Holding a cow heart!
Some other interesting and fun experiments we've run have been a dart throwing experiment where we tried throwing darts with and without prism goggles to observe differences in our throwing accuracy. We've also used stethoscopes and sphygmomanometers to measure each other's blood pressures after listening to music with and without lyrics! Even though an evening lab can be hard to wrap your head around, I've really liked how engaging it is and I can't wait to see what else we get to dissect and learn more about.
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