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!
Coming into Dartmouth, I knew the college prided itself on the "liberal arts" experience, but it wasn't until relatively recently that I learned to appreciate what that term meant. I suppose you could define it in different ways depending on the perspective, but I think of the liberal arts as a way of thinking – how to crtically think through different lenses to tackle issues across disciplines. That's why there are requirements like learning a new language and distributive courses that you must check off during your Dartmouth journey. These requirements equip you with a way of thinking, broadly, about the world around you. Interdisciplinary academics is one of the best characteristics of Dartmouth, in my opinion, and that trait manifests itself very well in Dartmouth's majors and minors.
There are several pre-made majors and minors to select during your second year at Dartmouth, and I'll leave you to explore the majors and minors website to educate yourself on the specific topic you might want to explore. Notice how I said 'second' year at Dartmouth. During your first year, you have the time to explore a wide range of courses before you select your major or minor. That's the beauty of Dartmouth's liberal arts education; you get to sample all kinds of classes that you might not have otherwise taken at another institution. For example, I took a religion course named "Early Christianity: The New Testament," during the spring of my first year. This course, to this day, remains my favorite course at Dartmouth, and it has virtually nothing to do with my career interests.
If you don't happen to find a major or minor combination that suits you, you can dive into the world of "modified majors" which allows you to essentially mesh together majors from different departments to tweak an academic trajectory just a bit so that it matches your needs. Again, I'll allow you to explore all the different possibilities of your modified major on your own (there are so many to choose from), so I won't go into detail on them here. A quick Google search of "modified majors at Dartmouth" will direct you to many departmental websites discussing the topic. Sometimes your niche academic interests transcend a pre-made list of courses, and Dartmouth allows you to solidify them through the "special major." In my opinion, this is where the beauty of the liberal arts shines through the brightest. It may seem counterintuitive to say that a niche academic area upholds a broad liberal arts education, but sometimes a specific issue or area of intellectual inquiry requires interdisciplinary thinking.
Damage from severe storms is a snapshot of the disciplines involved in meteorology and emergency management. You need to understand the physical science, know how to communicate the risk, and have the policy know-how to mitigate loss of life and property in the future.
I'm in the process of crafting a special major encompasing many aspects of meteorology and climate science. On one hand, you've got the physical, quantitative science that is rooted in mathematics and physics. This is obviously foundational to understanding the physical phenomena in meteorology. However, perhaps deeper beneath the surface, there are multifaceted aspects of meteorology that require a well-rounded, liberal arts education in communication, social science, and policy to understand meteorological and climate issues through multiple lenses. And from my perspective, viewing issues through multiple lenses is precisely how leaders are scultped and how the biggest problems in the world will be solved.
Applying early to a university can be overwhelming and confusing. As someone who did not apply to Dartmouth through early decision, here are a couple tips that I could have used when thinking about applying early to a school!
