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!
If you've read any of my previous posts about the nature of tradition here at Dartmouth, you know this campus is not afraid of being unconventional (in a good way). From the college research I did in high school, I don't know of many other schools that have a completely random roommate system; at Dartmouth, aside from a general roommate preference survey with questions pertaining to bedtime, noise level, study habits, etc, roommate pairing and dorm location is entirely random. Especially coming from Oklahoma, with a few decently sized state universities, most of my hometown friends were either 1. already friends with their roommates prior to attending college or 2. knew who their roommates were months before arriving to campus.
For a lot of first-year students, myself included, this idea of living with a complete stranger, or even multiple at that, can be pretty overwhelming at first. I remember not thinking much about seemingly important aspects of a first-year college experience (things like course selection) prior to my first fall term simply because I was so focused on whether or not I was going to get a "nightmare" roommate. In reality, Dartmouth's random roommate system has given me an unexpected amount of joy, that is to say, I love my roommates! And the good news is, most, if not all of the first-year students I know love their roommates as well—Dartmouth does an exceptional job at accommodating everyone's preferences/needs. My roommates and I like to joke around sometimes about a hidden X factor within the housing algorithm because the majority of the pairings just happen to be so good.
On top of worrying about the random roommate situation, prior to arriving on campus this past fall, I also spent a good amount of my time pondering the actual style of the dorm room I was going to be living in. It wasn't like I needed a specific set of requirements, I was mainly concerned with the sizing of my room and or how many roommates I was going to have if any at all. While I'd consider myself an introvert, my number one fear was getting assigned a single with no roommate. In my mind, I wanted at least one built-in friend that way I wouldn't betoolonely during the initial move-in/adjustment period. Sure enough, I ended up with more than onebuilt-in friend, and just to highlight again, I love my roommates, they're both some of my closest friends on campus.
Room 202! For the title picture of this post, Varun from Boston is on the left and Ollie from London is on the right with his (majestic) lego X-Wing
To sum up first-year housing at Dartmouth, I would label the system as well-organized, and community-based—in other words, it's awesome and something you shouldn't feel the need to worry about. Although I was definitely nervous at first, the overall system does a great job of ensuring each student has a room that fits their personality type and style of living.
Most students have to go back to college after Thanksgiving to take their finals, but not at Dartmouth! We have a six-week winter break, known as "winterim!" Let me tell you how I spent my winterim!
As a second-year at Dartmouth, I've embraced leadership roles that foster community, creativity, and support! Here's a look at how each role has shaped my journey.
