Hey there! I'm Isabel, a '20 from the sunny town of Tucson, Arizona. I spend most of my time at the Thayer School of 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.
FallHanover, NH
Looking forward to Sculpture I, Statistical Methods in Engineering, and Sacred Architecture of Asia this term!
I play alto saxophone for the Dartmouth College Marching Band (DCMB). Homecoming is our most eventful weekend of fall term: we march in the parade on Friday for Dartmouth Night, parade before the football game on Saturday to several spots in Hanover, and then play at the game itself. And, if we are lucky and Dartmouth wins, we play at a couple more places around Hanover.
DCMB at Dartmouth Night.
The extra special thing about homecoming is that our band alumni come back and play with us! This year, my mom, an '83 and a flute player in the DCMB back in the day, donned her old band blazer and joined us on the field. She told us that when she was a student the marching band wore white pants and white turtlenecks under their green blazers. While I am very glad that we no longer wear white pants (too prone to disaster), it was amazing to see my mom dressed up. A lot has changed in the band since then—we now use kindles for our music instead of paper sheet music in flip folders.
My parents, Jeff '83 and Kathy '83. My mother played flute for the DCMB when she was at Dartmouth!
My twin and I with the Dartmouth cake!
I had the pleasure of meeting another alto sax alum, Mike, who I believe is a member of the class of '75. He told me that he minored in music at Dartmouth and that his minor was probably the reason why he could still play with the band so many years later. Despite our 45-year age gap, we shared music and generally had a jolly time. Plenty of '18s who were in band with me my freshman and sophomore years also came by to play with the band.
Performing in the parade and for Dartmouth night came with its benefits—we were able to be some of the first people to get a piece of the amazing Dartmouth Hall cake that the Alumni Council revealed that night. I can now confidently say I've eaten part of Dartmouth. But besides that, having our alumni with us makes the band bigger, our sound louder, and makes the whole experience much more fun.
Dartmouth Hall cake at Dartmouth Night.
Fortunately, we beat Yale, so we were able to storm the Dartmouth Co-Op clothing store and march through the library, which is probably my favorite thing we do as a marching band.
DCMB in the library.
No other school can match the love that our alumni have for Dartmouth. Part of that love exists because alumni are always welcome to come home. Now, watch as the band forms a heart and plays Happy Together because we love our alumni!
For more about the marching band, check out my previous post here.
Between a busy class schedule and numerous cultural activities, taking time to stop and appreciate a good book or piece of art has been hard. However, this week I took the conscious decision to step it up and make the arts a part of my routine!
Though September seems so long ago, it's quite a marvel that I've finished my first term at college! I'm officially an "adult" and have survived on my own, with lots of good memories and fantastic people by my side.
Just before Thanksgiving I finished up all of my classes and finals, and now I am home for 6 weeks. These are the things I miss most about Dartmouth while I'm away (not in any particular order).
The transition to a place like Dartmouth can be a very intimidating time for first-generation low-income students, but Dartmouth's QuestBridge community makes that transition easier than you can imagine.
Here are the top three tips I've learned to embrace the cold, because it'll happen weather you like it or not (See what I did there? Hahaha… prepare yourself for a very punny post)!
I had the pleasure of meeting another alto sax alum, Mike, who I believe is a member of the class of '75. He told me that he minored in music at Dartmouth and that his minor was probably the reason why he could still play with the band so many years later. Despite our 45-year age gap, we shared music and generally had a jolly time. Plenty of '18s who were in band with me my freshman and sophomore years also came by to play with the band.
