snow Dartmouth

Jenny Chen

Class of 2021
Jenny with crossed arms

About 

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!

Academic Program 

Biology and Quantitative Social Science

Favorite Thing Right Now 

Big scarves

Hometown 

Bethesda, Maryland

Pronouns 

She/Her

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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.

    • SpringOn Campus

      Favorite Class: Introduction to Programming and Computation

      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.

    • SummerOn Campus

      Favorite Class: Sex, Gender, and Society

      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!

    • FallOn Campus

      Favorite Class: Sports Analytics

      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!

    • FallOn Campus

      Favorite Class: Design Thinking

      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.

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Seven Songs that Remind Me of Dartmouth

Like pretty much every person, I love listening to music. I play music while getting ready in the morning, walking to class, and of course, studying. I think it's cool to keep track of the unique mood of each term at Dartmouth with a specific playlist capturing my favorite songs at the time. Here are some (in chronological order) that remind me of Darty.

  1. No. 1

    Every Time We Touch by Cascada

    first year trips dartmouth

    This just had to be on the list. Though the song is 14 years old, the First-Year Trips program keeps it a timeless classic. One of the ways that freshmen bond on Trips is through learning dances together to songs such as this one. However, the moves are kept fresh in most of our minds, given that it’s played at pretty much every single formal for sentiment’s sake.

  2. No. 2

    Pretty Face by PUBLIC

    The first Friday of every fall term features a concert, Fallapalooza. My freshman year, PUBLIC was the artist. Although this was the first time I had heard of the band and their songs, I found them so captivating that I started following their music afterwards. The uplifting rock/pop is a perfect throwback to my first term as a college student - a time of excitement and novelty.

  3. No. 3

    Waking Up the Giants by Grizfolk

    Less connected to Dartmouth and more to my own experience, this song reminds me of my freshman winter, when I had just discovered the Dana Biomedical Library. Many afternoons and nights were spent there with a checked-out Genetics textbook, listening to this alternative rock album.

  4. No. 4

    Hedwig’s Theme by John Williams

    snowy buildings

    Don’t make fun of me, but after a winter break spent binge-watching the entire Harry Potter series, I returned to Dartmouth in January with a newfound playlist. The magical melodies were perfectly complemented by a Hogwarts-worthy landscape out the window and libraries that almost made me feel as productive as Hermione.

  5. No. 5

    Love Me Less by MAX and Quinn XCII

    selfie with friends at Green Key concert

    MAX was my sophomore year Green Key artist, meaning he performed at our biggest (and second) annual concert on Gold Coast Lawn. I remember getting out of the lab I work at and heading over to the concert, where my friends and I sat on the comfy grass eating some of the free caramel popcorn. MAX was phenomenal, of course!

  6. No. 6

    Mess by Noah Kahan

    noah kahan concert

    I discovered this artist by chance, and was hooked from the very first second. Afterwards, I realized that he was closely affiliated with Dartmouth - his mom was a professor here and his sister actually was a student! Weeks after I had bought tickets to his October show in Boston, I saw a poster stating that he would be playing at the 250th Anniversary concert over sophomore summer. So basically, I saw him twice in the span of a few months - hardly a complaint.

  7. No. 7

    Juice by Lizzo

    canoeing

    Last but not least, I couldn’t not include a sophomore summer jam like this one. My older sister introduced me to her album when she visited for my birthday in July. Lizzo’s songs were the perfect summer anthem, played during long canoe rides down the Connecticut River, off-campus drives for dinner, and “just because” moments with friends.

Posted 01/26/2020 at 9:30 PMAll List Posts

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