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 undergraduate research, Greek Life, as well as the Dartmouth bike shop! In my free time, I enjoy reading sci-fi, listening to 90s rock, and playing video games. 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).
A few weeks ago, I (as well as three other PPP bloggers) participated in an episode of "Admissions Beat," a podcast show hosted by Dartmouth's Dean of Admissions, Lee Coffin. The podcast covers all things "college admissions" through various topics and themes. The episode I got to be a part of was titled "Take an 'Existential Selfie'" in which my peers and I discussed the unique aspects of our college search process. Feel free to check out the episode (as well as the other episodes) here: admissions-beat-podcast! Dean Coffin does an awesome job of facilitating meaningful conversations that shed a lot of light on the reality of the college search/admissions process. All in all, it was a phenomenal experience; I've always wanted to be on a podcast!
Recently, I've been thinking a lot about the nature of the conversation I had with Dean Coffin as well as my blogging peers—"Why Dartmouth?" In other words, what did my college search process look like? More importantly, what did that final moment of actually deciding to choose Dartmouth entail?
Within the podcast episode, I talked about how I felt influenced by my peers early on when starting my own college search process. In Oklahoma, at least at my high school specifically, most of my friends knew where they were going/what they were doing after high school fairly quickly (attending The University of Oklahoma or Oklahoma State University). It actually wasn't until the fall of my senior year that I definitively realized I wanted to get out of Oklahoma.
During the fall of my senior year, I attended Dartmouth's Indigenous Fly-In Program indigenous-fly-program, and that was arguably the defining series of moments behind my decision to apply. I had researched Dartmouth the summer before my senior year, but the idea of actually attending and or being accepted was more or less a distant dream.
On top of being certain I wanted to get out of Oklahoma, I also really liked what Dartmouth represented as an institution, (collaboration and community in the woods!) so I ended up applying Early Decision.
In short, the moments leading up to choosing Dartmouth as my target school entailed a lot of dread and confusion related to the influence of my peers, but that moment of actually sitting down and deciding on Dartmouth was memorable and satisfying (even though I thought I had no chance getting in).
To this day, I have no regrets about choosing Dartmouth. Even though I've yet to experience a lot, being a first-year student and all, I can confidently say my enthusiasm for this school will never fall short : )
Planning on visiting Dartmouth as a prospective student or an interested person wanting to see our beautiful campus? In this post, I share insider tips to ensure your visit is fulfilled!
When I was in high school, applying to college seemed to be the hardest and scariest thing. I had no clue what to expect at all. So, I decided to share my thought-process regarding choosing to go to Dartmouth!
While conducting interviews, applicants have asked how I navigate academic stress and difficulties at Dartmouth. Answering this has made me appreciate the various resources available at Dartmouth that help students manage academic challenges.
