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!
I'm a huge fan of the band "Queen" (who isn't!), and I particularly love their song "Radio Ga Ga." If you haven't listened to it, I'd suggest you first go give it a listen and then come back and read the rest of this blog post. The song enshrines radio as something that is still useful and has a particular kind of retro beauty even though its relevancy was decreasing throughout the second half of the 20th century. That's the song I think about when I'm in the radio studio at Dartmouth. It's such a unique and niche activity outside of the classroom, yet it's one that can be broad to fit anyone's interests.
You might think of a radio station as something that merely plays a few songs throughout the day and gives ubiquitous updates about the weather that might not even be accurate. Trust me, that's not what WDCR is about, and that's certainly not what we try and portray at the radio station. Rather than fulfilling this radio stereotype, WDCR is used by students to host their own podcasts, play their music for an hour, tell stories, etc. The news staff at the radio station covers all kinds of stories from around campus and around the world – anything from notable construction happening on campus to results of presidential primaries.
On a more personal note, I took a liking to the radio station because of it's useability to send out weather forecasts and updates. Once I got acquainted with the news staff at the station, I learned about the weekly updates that aired every Friday for the student body to tune into. Of course, a weekly forecast about the weather was included in this update. I was ecstatic when the news team offered me a role as the "station meteorologist," where I would craft the weather forecast for the update on a weekly basis. This might not sound like much to someone who isn't passionate about weather, but WDCR was an avenue for me to pursue a passion of mine, and that was very important to me.
I suppose that's a sort of "hidden beauty" aspect of Dartmouth; there are all kinds of these hidden gems in the nooks and crannies of Dartmouth's brick walls in various clubs and organizations. You just have to be willing to go out, explore new things, meet new people, and unlock some doors for yourself! Who knows what might happen if you just take a step out of your comfort zone and try some new things. Radio didn't exactly sound like my cup of tea at the beginning, but once I met the wonderful people at the station and learned about the weather forecasting aspect, I was hooked. I truly hope you can find a niche like I did at the radio station, so maybe give WDCR a try if you come to Dartmouth!
It's easy to forget how easy it is to access walking trails during the hustle of a Dartmouth term. As graduation nears, I am reminded of how special it is to step off campus and enjoy quiet moments in nature.
With a solar eclipse sweeping across North America for the first time in nearly seven years on April 8th came a road-trip with hundreds of other Dartmouth students to a zone of totality near campus: St. Johnsbury, Vermont!
