Hey y'all, welcome to the woods! My name is Garrett Crouch, and I'm a '26 from Edmond, Oklahoma. Besides blogging, I'm involved in Greek Life and Dartmouth's Psychological and Brain Sciences Department. I enjoy reading sci-fi, listening to 90s rock, and playing video games in my free time. Other than that, I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to share a bit of my Dartmouth student experience with you—stay a while and enjoy!
For my first term at Dartmouth, I had a lot of fun exploring different courses/areas of study that piqued my interest—EARS 14 is a perfect example. This course in particular was very friendly to new students. I had a lot of fun analyzing the ways in which Earth's weather system works, everything from the tornado and climate labs to black lightning and supercooled ice. Professor Osterberg made the course extremely fascinating and personable! I'm extremely glad I took this course and recommend it to anyone interested in Earth Science.
I had zero programming experience prior to taking this course, and quite honestly, It was a split decision on my part. Nonetheless, I'm extremely glad I took COSC 1, and as a byproduct, I have a newfound love for computers. I came out of the course with a solid foundation in computer science principles as well as programming skills. More importantly, I made my own fully-functioning video game! ; )
I didn’t anticipate this course being all that different from Latin I, but it ended up being a nice surprise. A typical Latin course at Dartmouth involves small class sizes, group work, and the occasional lecture; however, within Latin II, we had opportunities to take a wide variety of field trips and learn more about the history of the Latin language as well as the many people that spoke it. I thoroughly enjoyed stepping outside the sphere of strictly language work (grammar, vocabulary, etc.) and learning more about the history of Latin in Latin II.
Psych 6 is by far my favorite course I've taken at Dartmouth—this course made me decide to pursue the neuroscience major. Whether it was walking out of the Moore Psychology Building with goosebumps down my spine having just seen a human brain in the flesh, or lying in bed rewatching lectures on the cellular mechanisms of long-term memory storage. This course genuinely made me feel like a kid discovering the world again for the first time, I loved it.
I loved this course—it was a fascinating mix of the neuroscience behind addiction as well as a deep dive into every class of drug. What particularly stood out about this course was the ability to connect my undergraduate research lab experience with the concepts I was learning (I'm currently involved in a neuroscience research lab studying psilocybin, the main psychoactive compound found in magic mushrooms, so it was fascinating to see the parallels there).
At first, I was worried Cognitive Psychology was going to be a slight rerun of some of the concepts covered in Psych 6: Introduction to Neuroscience, but this class was actually a pleasant surprise. We covered everything from how babies accurately learn their native language so quickly, to how we uniquely store complex, emotional memories as humans. We even covered a unit on everything psychologists know about the problem of consciousness, which was my personal favorite. There’s something alluring (and undeniably meta) about being conscious while learning about how we know nothing about consciousness—a recurring theme in the Brain Sciences!
Every first-year student at Dartmouth is required to take a writing course followed by a seminar course. And while there are a plethora of courses to choose from (I'm currently taking Writing 5: "Creativity, Originality, and Ownership of Ideas"), the framework of each course is generally collaborative and discussion-based.
My Experience:
As I said, my current writing course is called "Creativity, Originality, and Ownership of Ideas" and I'm really enjoying it! Right now, as a class, we're reading about copyright and intellectual property through different creative mediums, and what it truly means to "own" an idea. We've discussed the origins of copyright, the motives behind state-licensed intellectual property, and what it means for a society to be encouraged to create.
For the class structure, my classmates and I meet with our professor twice a week, and usually, we have some form of an assigned reading or writing activity to complete outside of class prior to attending class—most of our in-person class time is spent talking about readings we've done or discussing deep questions our professor has for us.
Within the class assignments, there's a lot of embedded collaboration, which I'm a big proponent of. For instance, almost all of our large essay-type assignments go through rounds and rounds of peer review as well as a one-on-one conference-style meeting with our professor. Unlike my experience with Dartmouth's writing department, most of the writing classes I've been a part of over the course of my student career haven't truly emphasized the process behind becoming a more coherent and competent writer, so It feels good to be a part of a learning environment that's genuinely hand-crafting and refining my writing skills.
Adding to the sense of collaboration, typically the first-year writing courses at Dartmouth are fairly small. My class has 15 total students, including myself, which is virtually unheard of in a basic entry-level type college course. On top of the size of the course, classes are extremely organized and personalized—I'm constantly looking forward to attending class because of the evolving discussions and planning outlines specific to my goals and questions as a student.
I'm learning a lot about what it means to be an accurate writer, but I'm also learning the importance of open discussion and communication as a means of creating. As I mentioned before, much of our in-class time is simply spent discussing ideas and questions to evolve the way we construct arguments or narratives as writers. Adjusting to the sheer amount of open communication and collaboration within the class has been a bit of a learning curve, but I'm slowly starting to appreciate it a lot (and express it) through my writing.
I'm still in the early stages of my writing course experience, so I'm sure there are more things I'm going to discover, but as of right now, I'm very content with the way things are going. I'm even getting ahead of myself at times searching for my next required writing course (the first-year seminar).
All in all, my experience with Dartmouth's first-year writing requirement has been phenomenal thus far. I'm learning so much about what it means to accurately convey a thought through my writing with empathy, and my classroom experience has sparked an earnest, comforting sense of intellectual curiosity; It's encouraging to be surrounded by peers and professors who genuinely care about sparking thought-provoking dialogue. A recurring theme of Dartmouth, something that I've experienced with multiple courses on top of this term's writing course, is having absolutely no idea what you're getting yourself into and ending up extremely satisfied!
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!
Every Dartmouth student is required to demonstrate proficiency in a language other than English. Here's my experience navigating the language requirement!
