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.
A week before class started, right when my family was in the middle of marathoning all eight Harry Potter movies, I received an email from my House Community, North Park. Dartmouth has a total of six House Communities, which are not unlike Gryffindor or Slytherin (minus the talking sorting hat and association with different personality traits). The email advertised the first event of the winter, and to my surprise, it was going to be Harry Potter-themed!
I brought a few of my friends who are also in North Park, and we set out for House Center A (aka the Onion), a building meant for North Park and West House. What we saw when we walked in was beyond expectations. The North Park executive council truly went all out in their decorations, thoroughly decking out the entire place in various Harry Potter paraphernalia. (There was even a Moaning Myrtle in the bathrooms, as we came to discover.) It truly felt like I was teleported to Hogwarts.
They served all sorts of elaborately decorated Harry Potter-inspired finger foods, cupcakes, and cake pops, as well as butterbeer. I’ve personally never gone to Harry Potter World in Florida, but I can’t imagine that the butterbeer I drank could be improved. And what's Hogwarts without a little entertainment? The Dartmouth Association of Magicians
All the treats looked too good to eat!
performed a show, and there were various activities set up all around the Onion, most notably a wand-making station. Not quite as fancy as Ollivander’s, but you would be amazed at what you can make from a wooden stick, glue gun, and paint. I completely forgot how relaxing arts and crafts can be, but evidently, the students and staff who organized this event had not. The event was attended not only by undergraduates, but also graduate students, and the Housing Community events are typically great opportunities to get to know them.
Who knew North Park socks could be so useful?
The first week back can definitely be an adjustment for some, but this was the perfect event to lift my spirits. As we reluctantly ate the adorable snitch cake pops, I could hear lively Harry Potter music playing, people “ooh” and “aah” ing at the magicians, and laughter erupting as the trivia game continued. As an extremely late but now avid fan of the world of Harry Potter, I sincerely appreciate all of the effort put into making this event so much fun and bringing the North Park community together. Harry Potter is, at its core, about an incredible community of students and staff banding together, and in that sense, Dartmouth isn’t very different. Now if only we had time turners…
I was attracted by the opportunity to engage with first-year residents and shape their Dartmouth experiences, in addition to working with other UGAs and staff who shared my interest in helping others.
We so very wish you could step onto Dartmouth's campus yourself to witness the beauty of our winters live, but COVID-19 has made visiting campuses extremely difficult. I would love to share some of my favorite photos from this past snowy week!
With lots of things (understandably) still closed on campus, it's nice to know that study spaces are beginning to open up again in a safe and responsible way.
In previous winters, I was able to skate on Occom Pond, usually at events with my Living Learning Community, and I'm glad to see that we're still able to take part in such winter festivities even with COVID-19 restrictions.
Since Dartmouth is on the quarter system, each season feels like a distinctly different chapter of my time here in college. Hanover has truly transformed over the past weeks: from deep shades of red to a white blanket of snow all around.
All the treats looked too good to eat! 
Who knew North Park socks could be so useful? 
