Greetings from the woods! My name is Gavin Fry, and I'm a student blogger with the People, Places, and Pines team. I'm a proud first-generation college student, carrying with me the full support of my crazy family. I plan to be involved with undergraduate research, outdoor activities, and club golf here at Dartmouth! You can find me geeking out about the weather, reading novels, and always drinking coffee (at any time of the day). So nice to meet you!
Academic Program
Prospective Environmental Earth Science Major with a Minor in Public Policy
Favorite Thing Right Now
My idea of starting a chapter of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) here at Dartmouth!
Oh. My. Goodness. What a fun class this was! As a certified weather and climate geek, I was totally entrenched in everything we done in this course. From the labs and weather presentations to the "flipped" classroom experience, I thoroughly enjoyed this class. Dr. Osterberg's excitement for the course material made it that much more enjoyable! It was truly an extraordinary first-year course to take.
I’ve loved this class from beginning to end. For one, I enjoyed it because of the people in it, but I also loved it because of the content. Through frequent class discussion, I learned about the health of our democracy and the ways it is compromised. Very enlightening class!
Religion 5 was a quintessential liberal arts course that deepened my knowledge in a subject I thought I had all figured out. As a STEM-oriented student, this class offered the perfect balance to my spring term schedule. As a result of this class, I became more introspective of how I was raised, and I'm more grateful in my ability to be a free-thinker.
SummerOff Campus Internship - Princeton, New Jersey
This summer, I explored my future career plans by participating in a research internship with the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University. I learned a lot about what I want (and what I don't want) in a future career, and I made so many awesome lifelong connections!
A course rooted in both philosophical theory and real, practical methods of becoming a better public speaker was the highlight of the term. Our class of 16 students grew to be a sort of "mini-family," and I'm so grateful for the connections I made. I completely changed the way I view public speaking and homed in on my own skills as a public speaker!
Once again, a course outside my major found its way into my favorite class list. This sociology course helped me better understand how children are viewed in society, the way sociologists study youth, and the major differences in norms around childhood around the world. Who knew there was so much to learn about youth culture!
Ed Lorenz was a member of Dartmouth's graduating class of 1938, and he's widely known as the father of numerical weather prediction (so he's obviously a hero of mine being tied to Dartmouth and weather). He found something absolutely beautiful and preposterous in the mathematical and scientific world. We had the basic equations to model the atmosphere to attempt to make some of the first weather predictions. By inserting initial observations of temperature, pressure, etc., these equations could help us model what the future state of the atmosphere would hold. Absolutely amazing. However, what Lorenz found during his experimental trials was that the predictions seemed to be wildly off from the observed future state after a finite time. It turns out, the initial input values into the equations were and will only ever be precise to a finite margin; the actual initial observations are infinitely precise. So, even seemingly trivial differences in observed and modeled initial conditions contribute to the mostly "chaotic" weather system we have on Earth. Just like a butterfly flapping its wings, it's the intricate details in life that may change the course of our lives. Here at Dartmouth, I've found my life to sometimes resemble this chaotic motion – free flowing just like fluid atmosphere. My scenery has changed over the years, and I'm finally starting to embrace that.
This is what my typical views looked like back at home... just to paint of picture of the rhetoric I'll be using in the next paragraph. Just look how beautiful!
I grew up looking out my window at the flat farmland I've always been accustomed to. I would go outside and watch the billowing thunderclouds swell in an overly moist atmosphere, and I would look down my dirt road that seemed infinitely long each time I would go check the mail. Nowadays, I walk outside to see the beautiful rolling hills that New Hampshire and Vermont have to offer. I walk across Dartmouth's campus and take in the history beneath my feet, and I get a feeling of warmth when I visit some of the local diners and coffee shops that I previously thought only existed in novels. My life has changed in intricate ways over the past few years, but it's a good kind of change. Dartmouth is a perfect mix of the similarities to the quaint life that I grew up with, and a good introduction to the quirks of a small New England college town. My point in mentioning the beauty of chaos theory is that it exemplifies just how fluid your life may feel like in college. Just like the ever-changing state of the atmosphere, college life can feel like there is a sense of impermanence and unfamiliarity. That's where Dartmouth came in for me. Although my life has changed in an infinite number of ways since I've been here, Dartmouth and its community has provided just the right amount of familiarity, quaintness, and warmth that I need for this transition period of my life. It's a wonderful place to grow as a person, and I'm so excited for you to embark on your own free-flowing, chaotic journey. Good ol' Ed would be proud!
At Dartmouth, there is an undergraduate requirement for language; after all, it is the liberal arts! Fulfilling this requirement looks different for various people and I will focus on my experience.
I have written about being a student worker plenty of times in the past, but I have yet to talk about one of my favorite jobs ever: ticket selling at the Hopkins Center for the Arts.
Traditionally, Dartmouth students take three courses during a term, but I decided to take four courses this term! Learn about course load and the academic system at Dartmouth.
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!
As I approach the halfway mark of my Dartmouth journey this spring, I find myself reflecting on the significance of distributive and world culture requirements in shaping my academic experience.
