Hi there! 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, tutor local high school students through Health Access for All, and mentor freshmen in the Great Issues Scholars LLC. My hobbies include reading (especially dystopian and historical fiction) and embroidering, which I only recently picked up. I hope you enjoy 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.
Although I haven't taken classes for the past few terms, this summer I'm working as a Learning Fellow for BIOL13 (Gene Expression and Inheritance). I was actually a Learning Fellow for this same class last summer as well. It was a rewarding experience, one in which I felt I learned a lot about the learning process, teamwork, and communication in general.
Even though I was working as a Learning Fellow last summer, which is kind of like an additional class, that didn't stop me from enjoying the beautiful New Hampshire scenery with my friends.
I've written a bit about this class before, but this term will be different for both the students and myself. First of all, the professor teaching it isn't the one I had my freshman year, and every professor has a unique teaching style and way of interacting with the class. However, the course facilitator, who manages the Learning Fellows, is the same, as is one of the other Learning Fellows this summer!
Even though the course will be online, we still attempt to make it as interactive as before, which is a difficult feat. In the first week, students are placed into groups, with the goal being that they aren't your friends, but rather strangers. The groups are also be diverse in class year and if possible, major! For example, I was put in a group with an Asian Societies Cultures and Languages, Neuroscience, and Sociology major (at least that's what we were planning at the time).
After the professor finishes lecture, everyone is split into their groups in breakout rooms. They have access to a Google Slides with a few practice problems and spend a significant portion of class time working through those together. As Learning Fellows, we are assigned two groups to manage and bounce between. Last year, we were in charge of three, but I think they wanted to ease the transition to remote learning and ensure that everyone gets as much help as they need.
At Learning Fellow Orientation, some students who had worked in the spring gave advice on how to best engage with students over Zoom. Their advice was mostly to be patient and recognize that making mistakes are totally expected. I also found it interesting that Learning Fellows were assigned to classes in a wide variety of disciplines, from Classics to Computer Science and Engineering.
Given the likelihood that most of the upcoming school year is going to be remote, especially for large lectures, it's great that summer term will provide another opportunity to become comfortable with remote learning. At least with regards to the course team that I'm a part of, we're playing around with different platforms and technologies to see what works and what doesn't, such as using Slack for more communication.
Even though classes are remote this term, usually this one is held in the Life Sciences Center, which is also home to this beautiful outdoor garden.
I've really enjoyed getting to know my assigned groups better through the weeks, even if it is through a webcam! Most of them are '22s, so I haven't had the chance to meet them before. But I still remember my Learning Fellow when I took the class years ago, and how grateful I was to have her as a point person when I was still a bit intimidated to ask the whole class. I hope I can fill in that role for others!
It turns out that finding research at Dartmouth is pretty easy, actually. Much easier than at larger state schools. There's a whole database dedicated just to helping us undergrads find research jobs.
No matter what course you imagine your studies will take, Dartmouth's graduation requirements will likely nudge you to explore areas of study you'd decided weren't in the cards.
Choosing which three classes you are going to take can be a scary process. A great place to start is by considering what you came to Dartmouth to study.
