My Classes for 24S
ANTH 6: Introduction to Biological Anthropology
The main reason I am enrolled in this course is because of the biology requirement within my global health minor (I wrote about minoring in global health here). But I am still excited about the content of this course! See, sometimes you get lucky for major/minor/distributive requirements; it makes you take a class you would not otherwise take but still find yourself looking forward to. One exciting thing about this class is that four anthropology professors are teaching this term instead of one. Each professor covers the subfield of biological anthropology in which they are a field expert. It is an excellent opportunity to get to know more professors in the anthropology department, a department I started exploring far too late in my Dartmouth career. However, I am still glad I have another year left to explore everything the anthropology department offers.
ANTH 17: Anthropology of Health & Illness
Speaking of which, ANTH 17 is a class I had my eyes on for quite a while. This class is a must-take as a psychology major interested in global mental health and public health. Beyond the content, I am also excited about the structure of the course with guest speakers and labs. Of course, these are not what typically comes to your mind when you think of labs, as these are labs in social science. For instance, our first lab will be the very first week, during which we will interview each other about our experiences of illness. Another lab example is a community observation. I do not know much about the rest of the labs, as the class has just started, and I have never done labs in anthropology before, but from what I gather from the syllabus, I am beyond excited!
PSYC 60: Principles of human brain mapping with fMRI
Speaking of labs, I will be taking a lab class in psychology that teaches us how to analyze brain imaging data from fMRI. You might have heard before that Dartmouth is the first liberal arts college to own an fMRI machine for research purposes. In this class, we will design studies and learn how to operate the fMRI machine. I also look forward to the opportunity to improve the skill set necessary to analyze fMRI data, which is an invaluable experience for any psychology major looking to apply to graduate school. While I expect to be challenged quite a bit in this class, since I have limited programming experience, I have trust in Professor Chang, who also teaches Power of Beliefs, a culminating experience course in the department I took last term (read more about that here). He is among the professors who understand the student experience and challenges the best at Dartmouth, so I have no doubt I will learn a lot from this class!
Stay tuned to learn more about these classes as I explore more!