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.”
To begin, I just want to start off by saying yes; it's extremely feasible to work a job and be a full-time student at a school like Dartmouth. In fact, in my experience, I've found that having a job helps me manage my time here as a student more efficiently. Although, with the number of employment opportunities Dartmouth offers, it can actually be somewhat easy to get in over your head (I've experienced this first-hand). There's definitely a sweet spot somewhere, and I think I'm fairly close.
So far, I've worked two different jobs throughout my undergraduate career—I've been a research assistant in a neuroscience lab, and I currently work for the Office of Admissions in writing these blogs. Both have been phenomenal experiences and great ways to make connections in areas I'm interested in and earn a good amount of money (coming from Oklahoma, where wages aren't always the best, I would say Dartmouth pays its students incredibly well).
For instance, this is the current Dining Services pay chart for students—not too shabby! I'm currently wishing I started working in dining as a first-year. From my understanding, some other jobs that pay well are UGAs (Undergraduate Advisors), Teaching Assistants, Language Drill Instructors, Research Assistants, and Library Aids
When considering specific job opportunities available to students, Dartmouth has its own website (JobX) for the purpose of hiring students, and this website is constantly updated with both on-campus and off-campus opportunities.
This is a glimpse of the website's job search portal; as you can see, it's extremely thorough.
And I've seen everything from Dining roles and administrative assistants on JobX to off-campus babysitting for community members and Professors.
While I'm not sure I'd personally want to be responsible for a Professor's child, I think it's pretty cool that our student-faculty community here is tight-knit enough to express opportunities like this
The trick to student employment at Dartmouth and time management here, in general, is to not take on more than you can handle—because it's an incredibly easy thing to do with the number of available opportunities for employment, clubs, extracurriculars, etc. For example, at one point in my second year at Dartmouth, I was taking some pretty hard classes while writing blogs every week, and I was working 10-15 hours in my neuroscience research lab. This is a prime example of what not to do when considering student employment!
Initially, the opportunity to become a research assistant seemed like a really cool and worthwhile job to take on, and while it was and I'm glad I did it, I figured out relatively quickly that I wasn't going to be able to work two jobs on top of my coursework and various social obligations. Dartmouth terms are fast and demanding, and there's no running around that fact. So, when considering student employment, as I said previously, there's definitely a sweet spot to be found somewhere.
My personal sweet spot has been my job here in admissions. While I'm not working as a research assistant anymore, I still write these blog posts, and one major thing I enjoy about this job is the aspect of self-reliance that comes with it. I don't have to clock into a specific building at a specific time nor am I expected to generate one predetermined piece of content—it's all up to me (mostly… I still have a boss and editors, but it's about the most freedom one can get from a student job). And this just goes back to my initial point about student employment in general, about how it really is extremely feasible at Dartmouth. You just have to be strategic about how much (and what) you take on at once.
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.
This winter break, I spent eight days participating in the TuckLAB: Energy Program before heading back to home. In this blog, I'd like to share more about what TuckLAB Energy is about, and why I decided to participate in it.
