Hey there! I'm Isabel, a '20 from the sunny town of Tucson, Arizona. I spend most of my time at the Dartmouth Engineering, but you can also spot me hanging out with plants and my twin brother in the greenhouse, snapping photos of picturesque Hanover, or drinking iced coffee even during the winter (Arizona habits die hard). I'm an undergraduate advisor for the North Park housing community as well as a member of the marching band, Dartmouth Humanitarian Engineers, and Club Swim.
This special topics class taught Adobe Illustrator and the CAD software Rhino 3D. We laser cut, 3D-printed, and used the CNC router to cut huge sheets of plywood to make pavilion structures. My group made an 11 foot tall pineapple structure that now sits in House Center A .
This is the one class that Professor Merton teaches each year and it is well worth it just for her. The texts are transformative and lend themselves to self reflection and better learning in all aspects of life. The expertly planned assignments helped me become a much better writer.
ENGS 20 with Professor Taylor is taught in a "flipped classroom" style where one watches mini-lectures before class and works on coding projects during class. Students are assumed to have no coding experience coming into this class and are taught the basics of C and Matlab languages.
SummerTucson, AZ
I went home for the summer, enjoyed the sun, swam nearly everyday, and worked for Cocina Verify, a startup company that verifies food safety in restaurants in Latin America.
The Peru LSA+ for Spanish is one of the defining moments of my Dartmouth career. We pet llamas, hiked in extraordinarily beautiful places, visited Machu Picchu, and read amazing Peruvian literature, my favorite of which is Rosa Cuchillo by Oscar Colchado Lucio.
My favorite class ever! Taught by the renowned Argentine comic artist Liniers, we looked at Latin American comics through time and were exposed to history and many variations of the Spanish language.
ENGS 44 teaches the basics of sustainable building design. Throughout the course we designed tiny homes for varying applications and went on several field trips around the Upper Valley, including a visit to a straw-bale insulated home in Vermont.
My class designed a range of installations for the Dartmouth Organic Farm, including small buildings, amphitheaters, and comprehensive pathway systems. We went on a site visit to the Organic Farm and had weekly lessons for the software Rhino 3D.
ENGS 37 is a chill engineering class that covers diverse technologies for water and air treatment, risk assessment, design for the environment, life-cycle assessment of a product, and other related topics. We also had one week of field trips during class!
WinterTucson, AZ
I spent my winter off-term enjoying the Arizona weather at home and working remotely for a FinTech startup based in New York. It was nice to have some time to reflect on my Dartmouth experience thus far and refocus for the future.
I took ENGS 71 with Vicki May, one of my favorite Thayer professors. The course covers modeling and approximation of structural systems, for example calculating the type, dimension, and layout of beams to properly support a roof with certain applied loads.
SummerBeverly, MA
This summer I worked for Build Health International, a non-profit that designs, builds, and equips healthcare infrastructure in low-resource settings. I worked on initial design for a hospital in Rwanda and researched germicidal UV lamps at hospitals in Haiti.
In ARTH 38.01 we learned about Buddhist, Hindu, and Islamic architecture as well as Asian funerary architecture. Professor Hockley taught us the basics of religious thought and introduced us to many fabulous structures.
Modern Architecture, taught by Professor Heck, starts in the mid-18th century with Neoclassicism and ends with the expansion of the 'International Style' post WWII.
SpringTucson, AZ
I am taking Glaciology, Reproductive Ethics, and Machos & Malinches (Gender and Sexual Identities in Latin/x American Literature and Culture) remotely this spring term.
This Saturday, I went to Harfest at the Dartmouth Organic Farm. Harfest celebrates the harvest season with local apple cider and donuts, pumpkin carving, and more. Like any big event at the Organic Farm, you are advised to “BYO mug” so you can enjoy the trademark apple cider.
It was an idyllic fall afternoon, with the golden sunlight matching the carpeting of fallen leaves. It was cold enough to be comfortable in a sweater but not too cold. Much different from the following Sunday, where I watched snow lightly dust the street as I scoured my textbook for helpful hints on electrical systems for ENGS 22.
Views of the river, including the kale I helped plant this summer in the foreground!
Looking out at the Hoop House.
It makes sense that our priority is homework, because we came to college to get an education, but I like to say that sometimes “you just have to live a little.” There was good chance that I wouldn’t go to the O-Farm until their big event in the spring if I didn’t go that day. And the weather was perfect - too good to miss.
Miraculously, Kripa asked in a Groupme chat if anyone wanted to go to Harfest. I ended up going with her, a ’22 friend of hers, and a group of other women from the Japanese Language Living Learning Community. I met Ava, a ’22 from New York with ridiculously good fashion sense, on the van ride over to the farm. I also met some other ‘22s; I regrettably cannot remember their names. I hadn’t talked to Kripa all term, so we caught up on how classes were going, boy stories, hopes for off-terms, and remembered good times we had together over sophomore summer, all while lounging on the grass by the river.
It was such a lovely fall day that many students were at the O-Farm.
Campus was even more beautiful when we returned. I was excited to get back to working. My two-hour trip to the O-Farm reenergized me through new social connections and made me remember the reason why I fell in love with Dartmouth in the first place: all the incredible people around me working to make their dreams come true. I ought to have been working, but sometimes that can wait.
I was excited to hear that two of my friends will be studying abroad in Ghana. Talking with them about what to expect from the program made me remember all the great memories and lessons I made and learned from my study abroad experience there.
Hello, People Places Pines readers! After a refreshing break, I wanted to reflect on everything that I did in the six weeks I was away from classes, and the techniques I adopted to revitalize myself before a busy four-course term.
This fall, I wasn't in Hanover… I was over 7,000 miles away! I studied abroad for the second time and joined a cohort of 16 students and three Dartmouth professors on the Environmental Studies Foreign Study Program in South Africa and Namibia.
Now that I am back home after my study abroad, I decided to write about the experiences, people, and places that made me glad that I went on the English & Creative Writing Foreign Study Program in London!
