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!
To start off, for those who don't know, Winter Carnival at Dartmouth is a student-run tradition spanning five days in February each year. One really neat thing about the carnival is its 100+ years of history. You can read about it here: winter-carnival. This year's carnival started on Wednesday night at Thompson Arena with an exclusive exhibition performance by the figure skating club.
Within the opening events, it was definitely a lot of fun seeing everyone getting amped up for the carnival, but the embedded traditions like the Polar Bear Swim and Ice Sculpture Contest were what made my carnival experience stand out.
Polar Bear Swim:
Every year before the carnival, Occom Pond (a medium-sized pond just a few minutes away from campus) freezes over, and a 15-foot hole is carved out for students to swim across. I'd always heard about the event being a part of Winter Carnival, but It wasn't until I actually did the swim that I realized how iconic it was.
My friends and I about to jump!
I've never been so cold in my life, the plunge was still incredible though. I think it mostly had to do with the lively atmosphere—everyone around me was anticipating and smiling just as much as I was which was definitely helpful!
Ice Sculpture Contest:
Coming from Oklahoma, until this year's carnival, I don't think I'd ever actually seen a real ice sculpture in person. The creativity in the designs of the sculptures and their presence on campus was incredible to say the least (and still is, they haven't melted yet)!
This year's Winter Carnival theme was "Shiver Me Timbers!"
I couldn't have asked for a better first Winter Carnival experience, everything from the weather, and anticipation of events, to the Dartmouth community coming together (as always) in its high-spirited fashion. The only thing I would've changed about my experience would be the majority of my floormates refusing to do the Polar Bear Swim…c'mon guys (we'll get em next year)!
Once again, something that I like to highlight across all my blog posts is that I'm really thankful for Dartmouth's strong emphasis on collaboration and community. Traditions like Winter Carnival always remind me how important those things are.
In addition to blogging, I work as a Fellow for the Tucker Center, which focuses on promoting spiritual and ethical life on campus. As part of this role, I'm leading the Interfaith Alternative Spring Break Trip. Read on to learn more about my work!
