Hi guys! I'm Chidera and I'm a '25 from Lagos, Nigeria. I've lived in a big city for nearly half of my life, so it's great to experience the scenic outdoor spaces surrounding Dartmouth. Outside of the classroom, I conduct research with the economics department, I'm a peer tutor for the Academic Skills Center and I'm also involved with the Dartmouth Energy Alliance.
With weekends at the Skiway, sledding on the golf course and ice skating on the Green, I didn't know winter at Dartmouth could get any better. But Winter Carnival proved me wrong! Each term, Dartmouth has a "big weekend" packed with several fun activities. In the fall, it was Homecoming Weekend and, in the spring, it's the Green Key music festival.
Every winter, Dartmouth hosts the Winter Carnival. It might not seem like a big deal to some, but Winter Carnival is a 112-year-old tradition that celebrates the fun and beauty of the winter season and the achievements of Dartmouth's winter sports teams. One blog post cannot describe just how many fun things there were to do this weekend, so I'll give you a list that's as long as my word limit will allow: hockey games, ski races, skiing and snowboarding at the Dartmouth Skiway (for free!), Baker Library Tower tours, human dogsled races, rock concerts, a chili cookoff, casino games, the "polar plunge" and snow sculpture carving.
I wish it was humanly possible to do every single one of these, but Winter Carnival is only for about three days. One of the first activities for the weekend was the polar plunge on Friday afternoon. It was a surprisingly warm day with a warm sun and clear skies. Hundreds of Dartmouth students headed to Occom Pond for a short swim in the (literally) ice-cold water, a tradition known as the polar plunge.
Various student groups and organizations could also sign up to carve ice sculptures over the weekend. There was a safety training to teach you how to have the most fun carving ice without getting hurt, but you could carve anything you wanted. There were nearly twenty entries with my personal favorites being Perry the Platypus and a man holding a smoking gun.
Apart from these, Dartmouth students also had the chance to cheer on the Dartmouth Ice Hockey teams in home games against Quinnipiac, Yale, Brown and Princeton. One of my favorite student-run organizations at Dartmouth is Friday Night Rock, an organization that hosts musicians about three times a term. This weekend, they invited an awesome rock band, Husbands, to perform at the Collis Student Center.
I'm so thrilled that I was able to enjoy what I think is one of Dartmouth's most spectacular and underrated traditions. Winter term is turning out to be even more fun that I thought it would be in so many ways.
Dartmouth is not just a college. With world-renowned graduate schools, why would we choose to call ourselves a college instead of a university? The story behind that decision dates back to a significant Supreme Court ruling.
On a quiet spring Saturday in Hanover, I traded the usual campus buzz for Monet in the morning and archery in the afternoon—a reminder that Dartmouth weekends can be just as meaningful when they're slow, reflective, and a little unexpected.
During my sophomore spring quarter, I took on the challenge of four STEM courses, and while it has been intense, the unexpected connections across subjects and the joy of learning have made it one of my most rewarding academic experiences yet.
Read about the Sophomore Summer Soiree and how I got to witness the beginning of something that hopefully grows into a long-standing Dartmouth tradition!
Here is my list of the restaurants in Hanover within walking distance of Dartmouth. Whether you're touring campus for the first time or are a Dartmouth student in need of a new place to eat, feel free to reference this list!
As I approach the end of my first year at Dartmouth, I would like to reflect on some of the experiences and lessons I've learned throughout this school year.
