Hey everyone! I'm Cooper from Wayne, Pennsylvania, which is right outside of Philadelphia. I am a '28 here at Dartmouth, and plan on studying Quantitative Social Science and Psychology. In my free time, I love getting food with friends, playing pickleball, watching sitcoms (personal favorite is Modern Family), and going on walks. I am super excited to be here and cannot wait to take you along my journey at Dartmouth!
I took this class with Professor Binkoski, and I absolutely loved it! We explored numerous theories regarding time travel and the existence of time, and it just completely blew my mind. Professor Binkoski is such an engaging lecturer and explains everything so thoroughly, which makes the class so incredible! After taking this class, I have become more interested in philosophy and cannot wait to take more classes in this department.
I took this class with Professor Horiuchi and learned more than I could have possibly imagined! This course is incredibly challenging and has a good amount of work, but I learned so much about the programing language R as well as how to wrangle and visualize data. By taking this class, I have confirmed that I want to major in QSS because of how interesting the material was. If you want to enhance your skills in R, this is the class to take!
In order to fulfill my language requirement, I took Spanish 9 with Professor Rieumont. This class was simply incredible. Not only was the content interesting and engaging, but my actual class itself (both the professor and fellow students) made this class so memorable. We learned so much about Spanish-speaking cultures all while having so much fun doing it, and I am so grateful that I took this class with such an amazing group!
SummerWayne, PA
I was home for the summer! I was able to catch up with family and friends, work at a local ice-cream shop, and relax for a few months. It was amazing to be back in my hometown!!
I took this class with Professor Emily Finn, and I absolutely adored it! Because it is an introductory class, you learn about various topics within the neuroscience field, but mainly at the surface level. It was incredibly interesting, and it is a perfect introduction to the major overall!
I took this class with Professor Pulju (who I also took LING 1 with), and I was blown away. Not only is the content in this class just so incredibly interesting, but Professor Pulju teaches it in such a way that makes studying for any assignment actually enjoyable. If you like puzzles and deductive sciences, this class is perfect for you!
I took this with Professor Wray, and I was in awe of how much I learned in this class. Although the name sounds a bit confusing, this is essentially an introductory statistics class with a focus on psychological research. We learned how to form hypotheses, run statistical tests, and reach conclusions, and I know that this will be incredibly useful for future courses in both Psychology and Quantitative Social Science!
Welcome back to my blog! For this week, I thought it would be interesting to dive deep into what a four course term looks like here at Dartmouth. The typical course load at Dartmouth is three classes a term, which may sound like so little, but because we are on the quarter system, with ten week terms, it is certainly enough. However, students can decide to challenge themselves and take four courses in a term, here at Dartmouth. On the opposite end, you can take two courses (which I am doing right now in Sophomore Summer!) to have a more laid back term if that is something that interests you. Let me show you what my four course term looked like and how I managed it.
I did this during my sophomore spring term, and the main reason was to get a quick start on the Psychology major, which I just picked up my sophomore winter! I took Introductory Psychology (PSYC 1), Experimental Design, Methodology, and Data Analysis Procedures, which is essentially introductory statistics for psychology (PSYC 10), Accelerated Computational Linguistics (LING 48), and Modern Statistical Computing (QSS 20). These courses are all dedicated towards my majors (in Quantitative Social Science and Psychology) and my minor in Linguistics!
My biggest recommendation for taking a four course term is choosing classes that give a really great balance. Do not choose four classes that all have written exams, as you will inevitably have multiple exams in a week. Two of my classes were focused more on projects, while the other two were heavily focused on written exams and problem sets, which offered a good balance.
An example week in my life!
Any sort of planner, whether that is Notion or Google Calendar, is going to be your best friend throughout the term. It is super useful to have all of your meeting times for classes there and when assignments are due, to ensure that you are not falling behind. Ten weeks can be quite intense, even for three classes, so it is essential to have some way of visualizing all of the tasks you need to get done. I also would love to shout out the Academic Skills Center for hosting numerous events throughout the term to ensure you get your work done on time!
Academic Skills Center in the library!
Four courses at Dartmouth are certainly a challenge no matter what combination of classes you choose, but I found it to be manageable and overall very enjoyable, so if you have the bandwidth for it, I could not recommend it enough.
One of the first Dartmouth terms you'll hear is the "D-Plan." It might sound confusing at first, but don't worry—read on to learn what it is and how it works!
