Aloha to the page of a wanderlusting writer juggling college life and several other hobbies into an eternally-short 24-hour day. I hope to shed light on the Dartmouth experience as I explore the brave new world of Hanover, NH and everything going to college here has to offer. In my free time, you can find me trying to learn a new language or building the perfect Spotify playlist (alternative/indie, anyone?). I hope you enjoy!
Taught by Gordon Henry, an Anishinaabe poet and author, this class taught me to explore Indigenous storytelling within digital contexts. I took this class with only seven other classmates, allowing us to really engage with films, comic books, and television shows in Indigenous languages or produced by Indigenous artists.
Taught by Timothy Pulju, this class taught me how to identify and understand how languages evolve over time and why. I analyzed and reconstructed fictional languages of imaginary nations in order to understand the link between language and culture, and ended up having such an appreciation for the complexity and beauty of language's place in history!
Taught by Lindsay Whaley, this class let me discover a newfound love for ancient apocalyptic literature. We analyzed ancient texts and compared them to modern apocalypses, looking at the zombie apocalypse phenomenon and other apocalypses in pop culture and comparing them to the ancient tradition of writing apocalypses. Additionally, I learned the Greek alphabet and now I can even stumble through ancient Greek passages.
FallNew Orleans, LA
Favorite Class: Native American Literature and the Law
Taught and organized by David Peterson, this class let me get into the shoes of a real linguist as we did fieldwork (virtually!!) with the Zophei language. I learned how to describe a never-before-learned language's phonology (sound system), how to characterize its grammar and words, and ultimately got to present my research to experts in the language family around the world in a workshop at the end of the term!
WinterHanover, NH
Favorite Class: Native American Literature and the Law
Taught by N. Bruce Duthu, this class taught me how Native literature can provide lens by which to evaluate, critique, and ultimately revise Federal Indian Law. During this class, I read works by Native authors like Tommy Orange and Louise Erdrich '76 alongside the opinions of definitive case opinions in American law and explained how literature can be a catalyst for Indigenous sovereignty.
Supervised by N. Bruce Duthu, I spent this off-term performing research after being awarded a Sophomore Research Scholarship to study contemporary Hawaiian cultural and linguistic revitalization. I studied 19th-century newspapers and contemporary Hawaiian texts in order to understand how Hawaiian language revitalization both past and present has advanced and continues to enable a contemporary bodied Hawaiian politic of sovereignty.
Taught by Laura McPherson, this class taught me about how languages create meaning through words. During this class, I learned how to analyze different languages' morphological processes and compare different approaches within the field as to morphological structures.
Taught by N. Bruce Duthu, this class offered me a glimpse into the lived realities of Native people in Indian Country Today. I learned about the economic, social, cultural, and historical roots for the struggles of Indigenous people today within the United States, and was able to write about the contemporary battle for Native Hawaiian visibility and Hawaiian sovereignty.
Taught by Laura McPherson, this class taught me how to engage in language documentation and how, as a linguist, we can put our skills to use to help communities seeking to document and revitalize their languages. I worked on the Satawalese language, spoken on the island of Satawal in the Federated States of Micronesia. Ultimately, my team created two dictionaries - one in English, one in Hawaiian, a website, and several materials that focused on the Satawalese tradition of wayfinding and non-instrumental ocean navigation.
Taught by Charles Eastman fellow Sunaina Kale, this class taught me about the role of sound in delineating, conceiving, and comprehending relations between people and the land in Indigenous musical traditions. Over the course of the class, we discussed Indigenous musicians, listened to music from Native peoples around the world, heard from masterful Indigenous musicians, and ultimately presented a project that creatively analyzed a song of our choice. My project focused on the song "Ask Yourself" by Foster the People, and I wrote a poem that integrated aspects of Indigenous languages and worldviews to answer questions posed by the song.
This term, I formally began the research process for my upcoming honors thesis in the Linguistics department on Hawaiian semantics! While living in Hanover, I also began working as a Senior Fellow with the Admissions department—a position I will be holding for the entirety of my last year at Dartmouth.
As we near closer to the end of Winter Term, course selection for the Spring Term just opened up and the amount of choices for classes is simultaneously exhilarating and maybe just a little disappointing — sometimes I really wish I could take them all.
To understand course selection at Dartmouth, it's important that you understand the D-Plan. The way the D-Plan works is pretty straightforward, and definitely starts to make more sense the longer you spend on campus hearing about the different plans everyone is making around you. Dartmouth College runs on the quarter-system, which means that there is an academic term for every season: Fall, Winter, Spring, and Summer. For your first and senior years, Dartmouth asks that you stay on campus for your Fall, Winter, and Spring — much like other schools! Additionally, Dartmouth asks that for your sophomore year, you stay on campus for the Summer — a special part of the Dartmouth experience called Sophomore Summer that I'm super excited to experience in T-minus just over a year. But for the rest of your sophomore year in addition to your junior year, you get to decide which term you will take "off" — you get to pick when "summer break" happens, meaning you can take the summer off like usual or choose to make it happen during another term. You also get to pick which terms you might be studying abroad, on-campus, or doing an exchange program. The possibilities are pretty unlimited.
In a Dartmouth term, students usually take three classes. In special cases, some students elect to take four classes, and some elect to take two classes, but the standard amount, by far, is three classes. Because we have ten-week terms, having just three classes allows us to move really quickly through a class, making the most of the term while also learning an incredible amount in a relatively really short amount of time. Personally, I love the pacing, but what I don't love sometimes is being able to only choose three classes. I find it really hard to choose just three classes because of how many look interesting (and also how many recommendations upperclassmen give me about professors that sound like wonderful people), but both times I've done this — for the Fall and for this Winter — I've ended up with amazing classes and incredible professors.
Here's how class selection works. During a day in the middle of a given term, the "timetable" opens up. This is basically a list of all of the classes offered for the next term, what time they will be held, what department, which professor, and what distributives the class provides. To graduate from Dartmouth, you need to have fulfilled both your major and distributive requirements — the classes required by your major and the classes required as part of Dartmouth's liberal arts diploma. This basically means Dartmouth wants you to explore a bunch of different things, which could sound intimidating if you didn't know too much but is actually kind of perfect, especially for someone like me.
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I discovered a really cool music class while I was studying in the Black Family Visual Arts Center, and this artwork caught my eye - Drawing class in my future?
If you've been reading my blog, you probably know by now I'm not a STEM major. One of the distributive requirements is called Quantitative and Deductive Science (QDS). You're probably thinking, 'That sounds like a math class.' You're right. Math classes tend to give you a QDS distributive after you finish. The problem is that math and I don't get along, and yet I ended up getting this distributive completed in my first term. How? Introduction to Linguistics (LING.001). Because linguistics asks that you think critically and deductively about language data, I could pursue what I'm thinking may be my major while also obtaining the distributive requirement that scared me the most. Thanks, Dartmouth.
After you pick your top three classes, Dartmouth has an algorithm that will try to process everybody's picks giving the most people their top choices as possible. After a certain amount of time, results come out, and you can see which classes you got. If you get all your choices (like me this Winter), you're done! If you're missing one or two, you can try again or you get to just pick another class. The process is straightforward, and even if you miss a class, it'll likely be offered again in a different term and you'll be able to enjoy it just the same.
I'm coming to love the little parts in Dartmouth's academic process just as much as I've really started to engage with the fun and social events on campus. Dartmouth is really being conducive to my wanting to learn about so many different things, and I can't say I would have it any differently. After a week of picking courses, my friends and I had the opportunity to celebrate by going to a formal put on by Native Americans at Dartmouth (NAD), one of my favorite communities on campus for all of the Indigenous students at Dartmouth. The day after, we decided to take my friend Kaulana's best friend from high school to Occom Pond for some ice skating and hockey, and she's the wonderful photographer that took the cover picture for this post! That's us enjoying ourselves on a Saturday afternoon, our courses picked, and our excitement for Spring term (it was 10 degrees, if you're wondering) growing extensively.
I hope to be able to give you guys a deeper look into the academic aspects of Dartmouth in my future posts. Aloha for now!
This is my final term before senior year, which is both exciting and terrifying at the same time. One thing I am excited about is the classes I am taking this term, so let me tell you more!
This is part two of me "nerding out" about my honors thesis! If you want to learn more about independent projects, theses, or the humanities at Dartmouth, check it out!
Many small classes at Dartmouth are seminar-style and are the cornerstone of the intellectual exploration and intentionality that define the learning experience at Dartmouth.
Growing up in New England and transitioning to living at Dartmouth, I'm all too familiar with the unpredictability (and beauty) of New England's weather. Let me tell you about it here!
I've officially completed all of my English major requirements for Dartmouth. Since I'm now a veteran English student, I'll walk you all through one of Dartmouth's coolest departments!
