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 fiction, listening to 90s rock, and playing video games and guitar 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!
Academic Program
Psychology & Neuroscience
Favorite Thing Right Now
Having my truck here on campus & using it to explore the Upper Valley!
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!
Instructed by the esteemed Reverend Dr. Randall Balmer, The Sixties was by far my favorite course during my sophomore summer at Dartmouth. As its title suggests, the class was an in-depth historical overview of American history spanning the years 1963–1974. Now, I wouldn’t typically consider myself a history buff, but this course was extremely intriguing. For one, while we explored widely known 1960s American history topics like Watergate and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., we also covered less mainstream subjects such as Freedom Summer and the murder of Medgar Evers. Additionally, as a class, we examined each topic in far greater depth than I had anticipated—the course was structured so that, in each week of the ten-week term, we covered a new year of “The Sixties.”
What's It Like Living Inside a Greek Space at Dartmouth?
In one of my Q&A posts here, I talk a lot about how Greek life is a significant part of campus culture at Dartmouth, but there are plenty (and I seriously mean this) of ways to circumvent the whole "frat" or "sorority" thing, especially if you don't think Greek life would be your favorite way to get involved socially.
While I was hesitant to get involved with Greek life myself, it actually ended up being a great space for me to foster meaningful relationships with my peers as well as find alternatives to the typical living situations Dartmouth offers (one of the greatest perks of Dartmouth Greek life in my opinion).
While I am a firm believer in thefirst-year housing system (2nd shameless plug of my own blog, I know), my experience with residential life after my first year here wasn't the best. Don't get me wrong, my sophomore year room was extremely nice, and the residential staff was amazing, but I found the sense of community to be lacking. It wasn't like my first year, where all of us incoming students were basically obligated to hang out and bond with each other inside of our dorms—there was a lot more effort involved in getting to know my floormates.
While I still made some meaningful connections within my housing community, it just hasn't compared in the slightest to what I've experienced within my Greek organization. For instance, instead of living in a dorm-type environment, I now live in a four-story house with 15 of my close friends. The days of coming home from a long study session or challenging midterm to a silent sterile hallway are no more. Instead, I get Interstellar in the upstairs living room:
And my room is actually that door on the left!
And while admittedly, I know amenities aren't everything—and by no means make a home—but here are some of my other favorite things about living inside a Greek space:
You get things like a house piano, or better yet, a carefully curated collection (decades worth) of academic textbooks, documents of history, novels, and board games inside a house library. I know it's a bit messy, but that's actually my fault as I'm our house's academic chair, and one of my physical responsibilities is deep cleaning our library each term!
Segueing into some other things (beyond the physical attractions) I appreciate about living in a Greek space; I admire the sheer amount of opportunities there are to get involved in the space beyond simply living inside of it. For instance, my role as academic chair within my fraternity is a direct way of taking something I'm passionate about (learning) and cultivating that into a space that perpetuates community bonding and involvement.
To be clear, the normal residential life system at Dartmouth does a lot of this type of community bolstering through the unique housing community system(I also like to call it the Harry Potter system), and I encourage you to research its intricacies because it's fairly unique to Dartmouth, but the way the housing communities go about their community bolstering just never felt particularly grounded to me. Whereas while I'm living in this house with all of my friends, I'm truly able to see a direct connection between what I'm doing within the space and how my actions are affecting those around me. Again, there's just something to be said about the reality of living in a home with all of your friends and being able to contribute to a space like that in a meaningful way—whether it's philanthropy, study sessions, house cleanups, movie nights, etc.
After all of that, it may seem like living in a normal Dartmouth residential dorm is dull and or uninvolving, but I can assure you that this is not the case (especially as a first-year, living in a dorm is actually a blast), and that there are plenty of opportunities to get involved, it's just not as apparent as living in a fraternity tends to be.
Ultimately, while normal residential life at Dartmouth is a great experience, I've found living in a Greek space to be particularly enjoyable and definitely not as taboo as most tend to think!
Your friend,
Garrett
P.S. Here's a brief room tour:
As you walk in, The first picture is of my couch and TV, and then the latter pictures are of my clothing rack and bed—they are off to the left in a little cubby. It's one of the more interesting rooms in the house as far as layout goes, but it's extremely cozy, especially during the winter months.
This past December, I traveled to Vietnam as part of the "Developing Vietnam" study abroad program! Here is a—little overdue—photo journal of my three weeks in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).
When I arrived at Dartmouth, I assumed dorms were the only housing option. It wasn't until sophomore year that I discovered Max Kade House, a German-themed Living Learning Community, and realized what I had been missing.
Oftentimes, life can be stressful. Though it's easy for me to feel anxious, I have found that identifying the things I am grateful for can be rather helpful. Read on to hear about what I appreciate.
Whether you're braving the cold on your way to class or participating in classic winter activities, there are plenty of ways to make the most of a Dartmouth winter!
