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

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.

    • 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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A Year in Review: Dartmouth through the Seasons

It's officially 2020, and seeing as I won't be returning to Dartmouth until next September, I thought it would be fitting to reflect back on my past year (most of which was spent on-campus). The year began with walking through the snow to attend North Park's Harry Potter event in January and ended with tearful goodbyes in November. Here's everything (I can fit) in between! 

  1. No. 1

    Winter

    winter snow fall

    Not to anyone's surprise, snow was a common sight most mornings of my winter term. I fully embraced the season and took skiing lessons every Saturday with my freshman year roommate. Besides a minor fiasco where I lost my phone on the mountain (a stranger kindly and miraculously returned it), I enjoyed every second! My older sister, who lives in Boston, also visited me for the Winter Carnival, which this year, was Ice Age-themed. We looked at the ice sculptures, climbed the Baker-Berry tower, and I showed her the skiing skills I had learned at the Dartmouth Skiway. 

     

     

  2. No. 2

    Spring

    Margaret Atwood

    In the spring, it became warm enough to study outside, which is something I love to do. Sitting on the patio of Haldeman, I frequently worked on my coding assignments and read my physics textbook while people walked to and fro to class. I also attended some cool events, such as a talk by Margaret Atwood, one of my favorite authors! I bought a copy of her novel Alias Grace as a companion to my worn-down The Handmaid's Tale. There was also an organic chemistry symposium held for my organic chemistry professor in honor of his retirement. A few of my classmates and I attended, and while most of the technical knowledge flew right over our heads, we did enjoy seeing a few photos of our professor as a Ph.D. student. 

  3. No. 3

    Summer

    Pete Buttigieg

    Back to (summer) school! Sophomore summer finally rolled around and it did not disappoint. Weeks were full of Bachelorette viewing parties, trips off-campus to Vermont, canoeing and kayaking, Wednesday farmer's markets, and a lot of sunlight. It was also my first ever term without a class with a laboratory component, which meant an extra four hours a week of free time. As It was gearing up to be full-blown 2020 presidential campaigning season, I attempted to attend a few for a better understanding of each of the candidates' platforms. After narrowly missing being allowed into a Joe Biden event, my friends and I made sure to line up early to hear Pete Buttigieg speak. We even got a photo with him! 

  4. No. 4

    Fall

    pumpkin

    Fall is always one of my favorite terms at Dartmouth, for many reasons. Firstly, the campus looks as gorgeous as it's ever been a few weeks in, when the foliage is at its peak. Although the sights just walking from class to class are striking enough, I also hiked Gile Tower for an aerial view. Fall is also a time of festivities — from the homecoming bonfire to FoCo's Halloween transformation (see above). Finally, with a new class being welcomed to Dartmouth, everything feels a little different — different enough to keep you on your toes while maintaining a comforting familiarity. As a junior, I took on new leadership roles with student organizations, mentored freshman through the GIS LLC, and started teaching music lessons with Musical Empowerment. 

Posted 01/4/2020 at 3:15 PMAll List Posts

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