Hello! My name is Cal Shin, and I am a '27 planning to double-major in Economics and Philosophy. Outside of academics and blogging, you can find me drawing (perhaps even designing for The Dartmouth), hosting my radio show as a proud deejay at WebDCR, perusing the Free Market, or hanging out with friends. Ultimately, I am an artist and a storyteller. I hope you enjoy reading about my Dartmouth experience; the journey has just begun!
I took this course with Professor James Binkoski and loved it! I had never taken a philosophy course prior to Dartmouth, so this introductory course in the department was perfect! After all, it combined my interests of philosophy with time and time travel — at least, how time and time travel are depicted in the media. This course may initially seem to be on the more technical side, but Professor Binkoski made sure to break down the various time travel theories — various ways scientists and philosophers think of time and its supposed movement — in a manner that’s easy for anyone to understand. A very popular course overall; I am fortunate to have been able to take it during my first term here!
I took this course with Professor Ha Yan Lee and it was absolutely amazing! I had my initial reservations about this course, mainly because I knew a lot of my classmates would have had some background knowledge while I had none. Professor Lee did a wonderful job of breaking down concepts in a manner that, as she often put it, is easy for even “your grandparents to understand”. Even beyond the course, the level of care Professor Lee exhibited towards her students is significant. She’s one of the most popular professors at Dartmouth, and for good reason! I ate lunch with her at The Pine through the Take a Faculty Member to Lunch program, and she gave me tremendous insight and advice! Because of this course, I have been inspired to explore more courses within the Econ department and potentially major in Economics.
I took this course with Professor Jasmina Savic and examined how the vampire figure evolved over time, starting with Slavic literature, going through Dracula and Twilight, and ending with “vampire” political figures. I realized what the portrayal of vampires could tell me about the thoughts of that society, including the fact that the early notions of vampirism are akin to modern-day diseases. For my final project, I wrote a research paper comparing the gumiho (the Korean nine-tailed fox) to several Western vampires.
SummerNew York City, New York
I had the opportunity to visit New York City for the summer! I met up with a good friend of mine, explored the city itself, and went to a networking event with other college students.
ECON 10 is one of the required courses for the Economics major. Based on my stellar experience with Professor Ha Yan Lee during ECON 1, when I saw that she was teaching ECON 10 this term, I immediately jumped at the chance to take the course with her. Once again, Professor Lee did an amazing job of breaking down concepts in an easy-to-understand manner. (The fact that her slideshows were colorful and featured various pictures of cats helped.)
Dorm Maintenance 101: A Spotlight on Residential Operations
We all hope not to encounter any issues when settling into our dorms, but that's not always the case. You may or may not encounter a clogged toilet (or two. Or multiple), power outages, creaking pipes, and a variety of other maintenance issues. Luckily, Dartmouth is awesome at handling students' maintenance needs should they arise.
Residential Operationsis the organization that manages anything related to Dartmouth's housing facilities (dorms, Living Learning Communities, and Greek houses). They are the ones who take care of any maintenance issues in your building or room. Whether your power goes out, your heating doesn't work properly, or one of the toilets on your floor is clogged (all of which I have seen firsthand at least once), Residential Operations will take care of it.
Residential Operations categorize maintenance issues in two ways: Emergency and Non-Emergency. General or non-emergency maintenance needs (see website for examples) can be reported by calling Residential Operations during normal business hours. Emergency maintenance that requires immediate attention, especially outside of normal business hours, is actually directed to College Troubleshooters. Regardless of your issue, rest assured that there is a group of qualified people who will handle those requests accordingly.
Another way to report maintenance issues without talking to someone on the phone is through this website. You'll see a page with different types of requests you can make, ranging from appliances to electrical services to heating/cooling to pest control to windows and everything in between. Once you click on a category, you'll see a pop-up where you can enter the location of the issue (dorm building, floor, and room number) as well as describe the issue in more detail. Regardless of whether you choose to call or not, your requests will likely be going through this platform. You can call and have someone on the other end enter this request for you, or you can choose to do it yourself. The outcome remains the same.
Here you can see the different types of maintenance requests you can make.
Hopefully, you won't encounter any issues while living in College housing, but should you do, you know where to go!
I applied through Questbridge's National College Match, but did not match. To others who also did not match, this is not the end of your application process! Here's what I did following match decision day.
Unlimited buffets, flavorful drinks, an assortment of breakfast pastries—Dartmouth has so many great food and drink options to choose from! Join me as I rank my favorite ones.
Walking around the Wellelsey campus, it's clear that it was built with intentional incorporation of the surrounding nature. The architecture of many buildings were also mindfully crafted to support Wellesley's unique principles.
