Hi y'all! I'm Catherine and I'm from the great state of Texas. When I'm not in class you'll find me carefully curating Spotify playlists, exploring the Upper Valley with friends, or finding ways to enjoy the great outdoors through different sub-clubs with the DOC. I am the Treasurer of the club lacrosse team, a tutor for the Institute for Writing and Rhetoric, and am involved with research in machine learning to improve healthcare outcomes with sophomore scholars!
This is how I start my day every Thursday morning: waiting at the Webster Avenue bus stop
A lot of times here at Dartmouth you will need to get off campus, and sometimes cars are hard to come by. Whether it be for research at the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) or if you just need to get out into Norwich or White River Junction to have some fun with friends, the AT has got your back. Good old public Advanced Transit.
As aforementioned, I usually need the bus to get to the DHMC, where the lab I intern at is located. I typically get on right near my dorm, and on the way back get off at the stop that drops you right behind Baker-Berry library so I can go get some work done. It’s really nice to be able to have such quick and easy access to the hospital because it really gives you access to a lot of cool opportunities. While my internship is at the hospital, my roommate is a part of the Nathan Smith Society where she gets to go to the hospital once a week and shadow a neurosurgeon and sit in on surgeries, which is so incredibly cool. She also takes the bus!
Right off the bus at my favorite stop, the DHMC!
In general, it only takes about 15 minutes to get from campus to the DHMC, and there are numerous conveniently placed stops along the way. One stop, in fact, lets you off at the Dartmouth Coop grocery store, which is KEY for when it’s winter and it’s cold and you want to buy some strawberries or other food that’s hard to come by in a college dining hall.
But there are so many more places the bus can take you! One time my friends and I took the bus across the river to the King Arthur Flour company, affectionally called here, big KAF. You can also go to White River Junction, West Lebanon, and other nearby places. This isn’t as common among Dartmouth students as the blue line to the DHMC is, but nonetheless, it is an opportunity that is there if you need it.
All in all, the bus makes it easy for you to get to the places you need to go! Hanover isn’t as secluded and in the middle of nowhere as you’d think, I promise.
Since my birthday also falls close to July 4th, there were some on-campus events, no school on a Thursday, and a weekend for my sister to visit via the Dartmouth Coach from Boston.
So far, each day has had its own instantaneous excursions, everything from friends calling to swim in the river to brief trips off exploring in the woods.
