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.
Taking this class was a random and unexpected decision that I am so happy I made. This class was about the intersection between human and primate evolution and our social behaviors. It really opened my eyes to how unique and beautifully diverse different societies are, and how this uniqueness influences our biology in interesting ways.
Taught by Professor Doyle, this has been my favorite class at Dartmouth so far. It was a calculus integrated with economic applications of the concepts we learned. It was the first time this class was offered at Dartmouth, and Professor Doyle made sure we all had a thorough understanding of the material. The fact that we were also able to see the real-world applications of the calculus concepts also made the class uniquely interesting.
I took this class to fulfill Dartmouth's first-year seminar requirement. In selecting a first-year seminar class, I sought out a department that I would not have taken a class in otherwise. It was an incredibly fulfilling experience and I learnt so much about Parisian Impressionist painters in the late 19th century like Monet, Manet, Degas, Morisot and Renoir. It also taught me about the political, social and economic conditions that typically inspire pivotal art movements.
SummerWashington D.C.
This summer, I interned at the International Finance Corporation in DC, through the Rockefeller Center's First-Year Fellows program which gives first-year students the opportunity to engage in public policy early in their Dartmouth careers. I lived with about twenty other members of Dartmouth's Class of 2025 and got to experience life in a vibrant city while gaining professional work experience.
I spent this term in Accra, Ghana for the African and African American Studies department's Foreign Study Program (FSP). I'm so glad I was able to take advantage of one of Dartmouth's study-abroad programs. During this FSP, I got to explore a new country and city while taking classes taught by the amazing professors at the University of Ghana.
After being away from campus for six months, I decided to start working towards fulfilling my distributive requirements. To fulfill my ART distrib, I took a Russian film class with a friend. It was an amazing experience and a testament to the ways a liberal arts education encourages you to approach each class through an interdisciplinary lens. For my final essay in this class, I explored the ways that government and political culture affect the nature of the film industry in different countries.
This class is one of the prerequisites for the international economics track's culminating experience. Dartmouth's economics major allows you to focus on a specific field that you're interested in, while also having the opportunity to take a couple of classes in other fields. Before taking this class, I had always been interested in international economics and this class definitely cemented my interests in the field.
I used my sophomore summer off term to conduct research with the economics department through the Dartmouth Economics Research Scholars and with the funding of the James O. Freedman Presidential Scholarship. My research project, which was mentored and advised by a faculty member, focused on the effects of European Union climate policy on the economy of my home country, Nigeria. It gave me the opportunity to apply and better understand several concepts I learnt in economics classes at Dartmouth.
This was the most enjoyable and impactful class I have ever taken at Dartmouth! Each assigned reading and class discussion was more enthralling and thought-provoking than the last. This class taught me how to think outside the box, write academic articles in the field of the humanities and how to intellectualise and synthesise my own lived experiences in a way that contributes meaningfully to existing literature in African Studies. Lastly, it taught me to think critically about pressing social issues within the African continent.
One way that Dartmouth provides such a rewarding and engaging academic and intellectual experience is through its small class sizes. The average class size is about twenty students, and I've personally only been in a class with more than 35 students once in the nine terms I've been a student here! Many of these small classes are seminar-style and are the cornerstone of the intellectual exploration and intentionality that define the learning experience at Dartmouth.
Coming from a secondary school with relatively larger class sizes where classes are more lecture-based with little room for discussion, like many other Dartmouth students do, I initially found it quite difficult to conceptualize what a "seminar-style" class looked like and entailed. Like many other Dartmouth students, the required first-year seminar was my first seminar-style class experience. First-year seminars offer every first-year student an opportunity to participate in a course structured around intensive writing, independent research, and small group discussion and engage them in the research process, offering an early experience of the scholarship that fuels Dartmouth's upper-level seminars.
In seminar-style classes, students are typically assigned readings from textbooks, articles, academic journals, novels etc that they go through before scheduled class times. Classes then provide a space for students to synthesize the material from these readings, asking questions and formulating arguments through discussions with classmates that are guided by the professor. I took a first-year seminar in the art history department on Impressionist painting in Paris in the mid to late 19th century. Drawing from both paintings and readings, we discussed the political situations and social conditions that inspired and were reflected by Impressionist paintings of the time.
Aside from the first-year writing and seminar requirement, practically every department at Dartmouth offers seminar-style classes, some more frequently than others. Most of the seminars I have taken at Dartmouth have been in the African and African-American Studies (AAAS) department. One of my favorite things about seminars within the AAAS department is how much they can build upon each other; many of the things I learn in one seminar are still very useful in subsequent seminars. It is incredibly fulfilling to see how my knowledge of key topics in the discipline expands and serves as a tangible indicator of my academic progress and growth.
The style of assessment in seminar-style classes is also unique; grades are typically based on discussion posts, reading responses, class participation and essays rather than closed-notes written exams with a time crunch. Professors typically regularly assign short reading responses and discussion posts to ensure that students are constantly engaging with the reading material. Midterm essays and final essays also form the bulk of your grade and give you an opportunity to formalize the arguments and syntheses presented during class discussions and present the knowledge acquired in the class in a way that prepares you for subsequent academic writing within the discipline.
In addition to blogging, I work as a Fellow for the Tucker Center, which focuses on promoting spiritual and ethical life on campus. As part of this role, I'm leading the Interfaith Alternative Spring Break Trip. Read on to learn more about my work!
