Hello! My name is Jenny and I'm a senior at Dartmouth studying biology and quantitative social science. On campus, I also work as a communications intern for the Admissions Office, teach piano to elementary school students through Musical Empowerment, and mentor freshmen in the Great Issues Scholars LLC. My hobbies include reading, attempting to finish crossword puzzles, and embroidering, which I only recently picked up. Welcome to my blog!
I looked forward to this class every week, partly because of the professor and partly due to the content. We read books on a wide variety of topics, ranging from privilege and how it affects our interactions with others to restaurant kitchens and the hierarchies inherent in surgical residencies.
Biol13 is structured so that you have to work as a group on difficult class problems and even on some exams, which was novel to me and pushed me to really understand the material. This class inspired me to pursue research (both off-campus and on-campus) related to genetics.
Although this class was daunting to me in the beginning, given that I had little to no experience in either Women's, Gender, and Sexuality or Art History, it was also one of the classes in which I became the most engaged in. For our final project, I investigated the history of allegories in Western art and why they were so often portrayed as women.
SummerOff Campus
I interned at Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, MA under Dr. Livingston. I explored the mechanism by which BRCA1 acts as a tumor suppressor. It was really rewarding to be able to apply what I had learned in Biol13, including specific procedures and techniques we had been tested on, to a real-life laboratory setting.
This class is notorious for its difficulty, and I would not call it an easy class. Nonetheless, it was my favorite class because I loved Professor Jacobi, who has taught at Dartmouth for 22 years, and I appreciated learning mechanisms behind why certain reactions happen. Instead of rote memorization, this class relied on being able to predict the products of a reaction, a skill picked up from lots of practice.
Although this was an introductory class, Professor Craig made it more dynamic and interactive, with several visits to the Hood Museum of Art, ethnography labs, and weekly discussion posts. I learned about everything from the Gebusi culture and their rites of passage to the opioid epidemic. For my final paper, I conducted an ethnography studying the social dynamics that take place in Baker Lobby and how that relates to the exchange of capital.
Though I had taken four years of computer science before (mostly in middle school), I did not have a very good experience with coding prior to taking CS1. However, the professor was one of the best professors I have had, explaining jargon in understandable ways and even giving out chocolate bars to students who answered the most difficult questions she would ask in class. I was certain that there was no way I would be able to create the lab assignments (such as a revolving solar system animation and map of Dartmouth that calculated the shortest possible route between two points), but she enabled all of us to through exercises, short assignments, and exams.
I took this class for a distributive requirement and ended up loving it. Each student was assigned a day to present on a certain topic - mine being patriarchy. I decided to analyze relationships in Crazy Rich Asians through a lens of the patriarchal bargain. We explored transgender issues, the history of feminism, gender identity, and so much more. Would highly recommend!
As someone who didn't know the rules to pretty much any sport, I tentatively signed up for this class. However, the professors made it clear that everyone had a different sports background, so I never felt at a disadvantage. We used Markov chains to predict winners of tennis matches, analyzed field goals kicks using logit models, and listened to guest speakers from a variety of industries.
WinterOff Campus
I spent the winter at the Fogarty International Center of the National Institutes of Health, studying epidemiology and global health. I was first involved on a project using data surveillance and social media to model Ebola outbreaks in the DRC, but as soon as the COVID-19 outbreak started, I transitioned to that. I was even able to publish my first paper!
SpringOff Campus
I was planning to study in Rome for the term and practice my basic Italian skills, but unfortunately the program was canceled. Instead of taking classes, I decided to continue working at my winter internship at NIH. Some of the research I conducted involved analyzing data on excess mortality as a method of estimating the true burden of COVID-19.
SummerOff Campus
I continued my research at Fogarty while also working part-time as a Learning Fellow for BIOL13 (Gene Expression and Inheritance), a job I also did my sophomore summer. It was great to see some familiar faces and help with transitioning this very interactive class into something Zoom-friendly!
I had heard about this class long before taking it my senior fall, as it's one of those quintessential Dartmouth classes. We had a total of six projects over ten weeks, many of which were group projects. They included everything from building rollercoasters, creating Photoshop posters to combat harmful misconceptions, and designing prototypes to improve student dorm life. I learned so much about what it means to design ethically and purposefully, and will definitely carry these lessons forward with me in my future endeavors.
Congratulations to all of the Dartmouth ‘22s! It's weird to think that just a year ago, I was in your shoes. Now is definitely an exciting time, one where you can already begin to see some of the paths your future might take (not at all intimidating, right?)! As I already said, I know exactly how you guys may feel – excited, nervous, happy, the list goes on and on.
My admissions story goes as follows – I almost did not apply to Dartmouth. I did not expect to get an acceptance, so when I found out that I did, I was absolutely thrilled! But I also felt a bit intimidated because of the huge decision I now faced. That’s where Dimensions came in.
My friend Heavenly (who went to the same high school as me) and me in front of Baker-Berry Library at Dimensions.
Dimensions is an amazing program into which a lot of people put an enormous amount of planning, creativity, and effort. It’s a great way to learn more about the school and personally, I found Dimensions an extremely important factor in my decision to attend. Dimensions takes you beyond whatever may be online or on paper about class sizes, professors, extracurricular activities, and beyond, and allows you to actually experience camps firsthand. For these reasons, if you have the opportunity to come to Dimensions, please do! I promise, you won’t regret it.
I was able to ask current students about the biological sciences department and obtain an overview of possible opportunities through events such as this one.
My Dimensions experience started off a bit rough – given that I woke up at 3 am that morning to drive from Maryland to Dartmouth in time for the programming. But I was quickly shown the warmth of Dartmouth students through my host, who helped me carry my sleeping bag and other overnight materials to her room in McLaughlin. I was interested in staying with a student with the same academic interests as mine – she was also pre-med with an interest in global health. It was staying with her and learning about her Living Learning Community (LLC), the Global Village, that inspired me to apply for the LLC when it came time to do so. She introduced me to a bunch of people on her floor, and we all ended up chatting in a common room for hours.
The town of Hanover feels very quaint, especially the used bookstore Left Bank Books.
But by far, my favorite part of Dimensions are the shows and tours that students have in store. I remember eating gelato at 11 pm, marveling at the beauty of the Hogwarts-esque Tower Room, and looking at the stars through the observatory’s telescope. Dimensions also gives students an opportunity to explore Hanover. I remember going to the Dartmouth Co-op with my family and buying my first ever piece of Dartmouth gear, with ‘Dartmouth Class of 2021’ written across the shirt. Little did I know that this title will now remain a part of my identity for life, bringing me closer to fellow ‘21s as well as Dartmouth students and alumni of all years. Welcome home, ‘22s.
