Paris

Jenny Chen

Class of 2021
Jenny with crossed arms

Bio 

Hello! My name is Jenny and I'm a sophomore at Dartmouth. Besides blogging, I work as a communications intern for the admissions office! I also do research at Geisel School of Medicine, and I am a mentor for the Great Issues Scholars LLC, centered around security, global health, and environment. Some of my favorite ways to relax include running around Occom Pond, stargazing, and spending quality time with some of the amazing people I have met here.

Academic Program 

Biology Major, Global Health and QSS Minors

Favorite Thing Right Now 

Billie Eilish

Hometown 

Bethesda, Maryland

Pronouns 

She/Her

You are here

Jenny's D-Plan

What's a D-Plan?

    • FallOn Campus

      Favorite Class: Sociology 001

      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.

    • WinterOn Campus

      Favorite Class: Biology 013

      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.

    • SpringOn Campus

      Favorite Class: The Body: The Nude in Western Visual Art

      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.

    • FallOn Campus

      Favorite Class: Organic Chemistry

      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.

    • WinterOn Campus

      Favorite Class: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology

      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.

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How to Choose Your Off-Term

You may have heard of the unique opportunity that all Dartmouth students face – choosing when to take their off-term. To give you a crash course on the D-Plan, all freshmen have to be taking classes at Dartmouth during their fall, winter, and spring. Seniors have the same requirement. In addition, most sophomores stay in Hanover the summer after their sophomore year. That extra term, compared to students at other colleges, means you can choose when to take your lost “summer break” sometime else.  

I will be taking my junior year winter off. This is a pretty common choice, especially among pre-med students. And that brings to the first criteria to decide when your off-term should be:

  1. No. 1

    Classes

    It depends on what you want to use your off-term for, but for students intent on graduate school, oftentimes they plan on spending at least part of their off-term in junior year studying for entrance tests (MCAT, LSAT, etc.). In that case, the off-term has to be after you have finished all the courses associated to those tests.

     

  2. No. 2

    Internships

    Since the D-plan is so flexible, it’s possible to search for internships for numerous seasons, and then choose the one that you receive an offer from or the one that is the best fit for your interests. Some of my friends have interviewed for sophomore summer internships, but if they do not hear back, they will stay in Hanover and take classes instead. There is usually less competition for internships during the fall, winter, and spring.

  3. No. 3

    Other Commitments

    There are so many other factors that might influence when you want to go off, including other obligations you may have, such as athletics, student groups, and jobs. Although the vast majority of people who work with Dartmouth students are accustomed to the D-plan, and the rotating schedule of people going on and off during various terms, it’s still important to keep in mind.

  4. No. 4

    Your Preferences

    fall

    Besides what you must and must not do, there are also your personal preferences to keep in mind, which is one of the things that makes the D-Plan so great. Although I do love the winter in Hanover, I would rather be on-campus during the fall and spring. If there are also big family events that you would like to be home for, like a graduation or wedding, those can also be taken into consideration. Ultimately, you have time from freshman fall to your junior year to decide when to take your off-term, the most important thing being that it is all up to you.

Posted 01/22/2019 at 12:30 PMAll List Posts

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