Jenny Chen

Deciding to take a PE class with my roommate in my freshman fall was one of the best choices! We got to bond a lot and held each other accountable to spend at least part of the week in an active way. Freshman year can be overwhelming so it’s important to take time to destress, in our case through a spin class. Now, I’ve resorted to finding YouTube videos to do the same.

I loved to do movie nights with my friends, whether that was in someone’s dorm, common room, or the Hopkins Center for the Arts (tickets are only $5 for students!) Nowadays, we like to plan Zoom calls instead, to update each other on what’s going on in our lives and play virtual games like Code Names and Scribbio.

There are so many chances to listen to new music at Dartmouth, as they will invite artists for large concerts such as Green Key (the annual music concert weekend in the spring) and smaller weekly band playings. I’ve gotten to see MILCK, hippocampus, and Noah Kahan at Dartmouth, all for free. Obviously that’s not an option now, so it’s best to stick to making Spotify playlists instead.

I had never done or even heard about a group exam before this genetics class. In the first week of class, we were assigned to groups, with whom we worked on problems every class. I was pretty intimidated because I was just a freshman, but I loved having extra support from my group. During group exam weekends, we would meet in the library for chunks of time to solve open-ended and complex genetics questions. Fun fact: our group name was Blue Genes!

For our final project, we were allowed to choose any topic related to the course - The Body and the Nude in Western Visual Art. I decided to delve into the personification of Western ideals, such as democracy, liberty, and justice, as female figures in artwork. I really loved learning more about famous paintings and sculptures I had known about all my life - like Liberty Leading the People, American Progress, and The Statue of Liberty.

In my class on Applied Multivariate Data Analysis, we also had the ability to choose our final project topic. With three other students, I worked on a project on the factors determining sentence length and severity for U.S. inmates surveyed in 2004, across both state and federal prisons. It was a great learning experience to apply analyses we had covered to our data.

While I have already gotten a taste of various departments outside of my typical scope of classes, such as Art History, Italian, and Government, there are still so many more classes that I wish I could take. Unfortunately, I have no space left in my schedule for classes that don’t count for my majors, but ENGS21 (Design Thinking), TUCK2 (Marketing), and PSYC23 (Social Psychology) are just a few of the courses I have in mind. If you have friends who strongly recommend a class for its content and/or professor, don't be afraid to add it to your classes, even if it's unrelated to your major!

Dartmouth offers a special program whereby each student gets a voucher every term to take a professor out to lunch at Pine, a local restaurant on-campus. While I did do this once, I feel like I should have taken advantage of the chance to get to know my professors better over a free lunch. Also, if you’re worried about awkward silences, bring a friend! Professors are such a great resource for major advising, research, internships, and post-graduate plans. 

In freshman year, I stuck to clubs related to my academic interests, and these were mostly informal. I wish I had explored a bit more by joining more structured clubs such as The Dartmouth or community serviced-focused clubs. Also, I was hesitant to start anything new in my sophomore or junior year, but it's never too late! These are a great way to meet more people, and if you don't really enjoy it, you can always stop going to meetings, so it's almost always a low-commitment situation. 

In the fall, I tried a lot of new things, including which classes I took. I enrolled in an introductory Italian language and art history course, both of which I loved! I took Spanish through middle and high school, but wasn’t particularly good at it, so I was nervous about testing my rusty language skills again. But I saw my Italian skills improve dramatically as the course of the term went by, in part due to the speaking drills held multiple times a week (which were conducted by a student instructor and with no grades). It was so much fun to learn new phrases, and class felt more like a discussion with friends than a formal lecture. I also learned a ton about Maria Montessori and her education system... 

This winter, it was really nice because two of my close friends were interning at D.C., only a few metro stops away from my house. Even though I’d lived here for a long time, there are a lot of parts of the D.C. scene that I didn’t appreciate before. One of my friends was a sports fan, so he took us to an NBA game. We also went to the Kennedy Center for an orchestra performance, and I’d never been before! My other friend was more into art, so we made sure to hit up the most famous art museums and galleries. This sort of thing happens all the time at Dartmouth, but I really appreciated it away from Dartmouth as well. And this is also reciprocal, meaning you should show your friends your interests and passions! 

I feel like this one is a given, considering everything that’s happened this year. While I was hoping for a winter in D.C., a spring term in Rome, and a summer in Boston, let’s just say that that hasn’t happened. But I’m super grateful for my internship and the fact that I’m able to spend so much more time with my family than I thought was possible during college. I'm someone who identifies as an absolute change-hater, but looking for the bright side kept me optimistic. For example, I've really loved my internship at the Fogarty International Center, and I've gained a lot by being able to intern for more than the typical two months of an off-term. It's definitely changed the trajectory of my career plans and made me want to pursue a Master's in epidemiology!