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.
The best part about academic life at a college is that, at the end of the day, you're going somewhere to go to school. Being on campus makes it really easy to get into the mentality necessary to study, get work done, and make the most of the academic resources provided by a place like Dartmouth — not to mention the availability of tutors, office hours, and a beautiful library with the best coffee for afternoon study sessions. The mentality comes easy with effort, but the same cannot be said about home.
For this term, the transition was difficult, in no small part because spring break and spring term bled into each other without much of a transition — no plane ride, no coach ride up to Hanover, no reunion Foco dinners, no celebratory KAF to start off the term…I'm nostalgic, can you tell? It wasn't as bad with the first few weeks, but coming up on Week 5 now at the time of my writing this post, I've gotten a bit creative with how to simulate a learning environment when the best parts of home (aka doing nothing) need to be procrastinated in favor of homework.
On campus, I wake up around 9 AM to get started, which is about the average for campus I'd say. I've never had a class start before 10 AM, which holds true for this term, but I've started waking up at 7 AM in order to get my mindset as close to focused as possible. I'm sort of simulating the conditions of high school, seeing as they're just about the closest to today. If high school me managed to wake up at 6 AM to get started, college me can try to come close.
Additionally, I've started to be quite the homemade espresso consumer. My family has always liked to brew our own espresso, so I've been trying to keep it to one cup a day. The energy rush of homemade, smooth espresso is a treat, and I love my parents for investing in a high-quality coffee machine. It's not KAF, but it's definitely far past the Keurig in terms of quality. I'm also drinking out of the mug I got for my dad for Father's Day, which explains the picture for this post.
I can't stress how helpful a good study playlist is, so if you aren't on Spotify already, I highly recommend a download to use their themed playlists. I alternate between movie soundtracks, my favorite bangers, and piano instrumentals depending on the work I'm doing, and I've found a good song can easily jumpstart my brain to get into a grind mentality fairly quickly.
It really helps to know my friends are in the same boat, and we keep a pretty active Snapchat groupchat, have Zoomed a handful of times, and actually are keeping a quarantine diary to chronicle our adventures during this time period — it's just a really long Google Slides presentation where we aim for a slide every day or so as a kind of group diary, but the shared experience fosters a spirit of perseverance for everyone. Plus, we give each other music recommendations almost on the daily, because if we're going to social distance, we're going to do it with our earbuds in.
I hope you and your loved ones are keeping safe, secure, and healthy during this time, and I hope those of you who applied to colleges in the past year have come up with the choice that's best for you. I hope to welcome some of you in the fall, so please don't hesitate to say hi if you see me! And for those of you thinking about applying in the fall, if it hasn't come through in any of my prior blog posts, choosing Dartmouth is one of the best choices I've made.
Through Dartmouth's Guarini Institute for International Study, I am getting to take classes and experience life at Wellesley College, an all-women's school!
Academics can be challenging at Dartmouth. But there are lots of groups across campus here to support you through your academic journey. Read on for my experience asking for help and a few organizations that might be helpful to you!
