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.
It's Friday morning, and my alarm goes off at 4:15 AM. No, I didn't have an exam to study for, or a plane to catch. I was going on a sunrike (sunrise hike)! With some other girls in my sorority, I planned to hike Gile Mountain and watch the sunrise from the top of the tower – neither of which I had done before. It was one of the remaining items on my bucket list, so even though I was exhausted, I resisted pressing that snooze button.
Prime viewing spot!
Upon waking up, I quickly got ready and met the other girls in the kitchen. With anything as early as a sunrike, it's inevitable that some people will accidentally miss their alarm. Nonetheless, we eventually hopped in a few cars and started the twenty-minute drive to Gile mountain! I have only hiked a handful of times since coming to Dartmouth, but every time I go, I'm always astounded by the views of the surrounding nature and the fact that they are so close to campus. This time was not any different.
The hike was super short, only half an hour or so, and very manageable even for people prone to tripping, such as me. During the day, many families hike Gile and bring along young children, so it's definitely a safe and easy hike. The tower though, that was another question. As someone who is mildly afraid of heights, I simply kept on climbing stair after stair, trying to block out the fear from being so many stories above the ground.
Before the sunrise.
After the sunrise.
It seems that we were not the only people who had thought of embarking on a sunrike that morning, as the top of the tower was already filled with some students we knew and one of the students' parents. Instead of all crowding together, we decided to watch the sunrise from one flight of stairs below, which also meant we could sit on the stairs (peak laziness, am I right?). It was crazy to see the sun literally come up before our very own eyes, and so quick, too! Within a few minutes, the sun had risen in the sky. That morning was particularly foggy, which was a pain to drive in, but from our position, made it seem as if the mountains were islands surrounded by water.
Breakfast food, the perfect thing to close out a perfect morning.
We lingered around for a while, moving to the actual top of the tower once the people there left. We snapped some photos, then headed to our next destination: The Fort! It's a popular diner near campus, and I had never gone before. After arriving back home, I ended up napping for an hour before class even though I drank coffee at the Fort, content and full from breakfast. If you ever have the chance to go on a sunrike, and I know you will if you come here as there is one at the very end of First-Year Trips, definitely go! It's worth a few missed hours of sleep.
While touring schools the summer before my senior year, the freshmen I talked to gushed all about Dartmouth's collaborative atmosphere. Now as a current sophomore, I thought I'd share how students here genuinely want to help lift each other up!
One thing that many people contemplate before coming to college is whether they will perform to their expected standards, and in this blog post, I am going to share with you what helped me navigate my classes.
I can't tell you how to avoid feeling overwhelmed, as I'm still working on that myself, but I can tell you a piece of advice that's helped me along the way: Saturday Mornings Are Sacred (SMAS).
Performing arts groups flourish at Dartmouth with numerous dance and a cappella groups. I have often found myself attending these performances happening throughout the term.
Prime viewing spot! 
Breakfast food, the perfect thing to close out a perfect morning. 
