I'm Kalina, a '27 from Sofia, Bulgaria. I love books (I love reading and writing them), and I particularly love fantasy (i.e., I'm an expert on Middle Earth and Hogwarts studies). I'm fascinated by the human brain and the real-world magic of science. I also love hiking, bird-watching, climbing, and em dashes.
Instead of taking a normal Writing 5 course, I decided to fulfill my first-year writing requirement by taking HUM 1. This course helped me strengthen my relationship to literature and writing. It changed the way in which I thought about classics, both books and movies (we saw Wall-E, by the way). And it also changed the way I thought about academic writing and literary criticism. A third of the course was made up of lectures by professors from different departments, while the other two thirds were discussions with a single professor and a small group of 15 students.
Intro to Neuroscience was the first course I was truly excited about. It wasn't an easy course; we had a weekly quiz of ten to thirteen questions covering the lectures from the past few days, but it was very interesting and also very funny (Professor Winter's humor is legendary). We learned about the human brain at the level of individual cells. We also studied it at the level of different systems, from the olfactory system to the parasympathetic nervous system. And last, we learned about cognition: learning, attention, language. We saw a real human brain with formaldehyde dripping from it. We saw a real sheep's brain. And a rat's brain. And we pocked each other with paper clips to determine the sensitivity of our touch receptors.
Journalism with Professor Alexis Jetter was an enjoyable class, sometimes challenging but very satisfying. We covered a lot of US history through the lens of the media, and we started every class with a discussion of the current news and events (thanks to these discussions, I feel like a real adult now—not so lost when the conversation turns toward politics). Several guest lecturers—from former students of Professor Jetter who're now journalists to a New York Times war correspondent—brought us real stories from the field. In the middle of the term, each of us had to find someone over 30 years old in the Upper Valley, spend a day with them, and write a profile.
SummerSofia, Bulgaria
I'm spending my first summer back home, helping my family care for my newborn sister. In my free time (changing diapers takes a lot of time!), I'm doing research for the cognitive neuroscience lab FINN Lab, preparing for my classes in the fall, and working on a new book.
Time for a little thought experiment: Imagine you're an undergraduate research assistant at a lab at Dartmouth. You work closely with a professor or a graduate student, and you're going to (hopefully) put in ten hours of work a week. At the end of the term, you'll receive a stipend, provided by the Undergraduate Research Assistantship at Dartmouth (URAD) program.
Now, how do you know your research project is a good fit for you?
A. It seems interesting. The papers take a while to read, but you manage. It's fine.
B.The work is so cool that you're procrastinating on your school work by doing work for your lab instead of your classes.
C. It's the middle of Winterim and you find yourself restless and bored and looking for a new scientific paper to read on the couch while your baby sister plays nearby.
D. All of the above except for A.
Projects that are "interesting" and "fine" are… well, interesting and fine. You can totally work on them. You'll probably learn a lot, after all, you're working with a Dartmouth researcher and you're sitting in on lab meetings and exploring a new field.
This term (sophomore fall), however, I discovered there was a second kind of research project. I'm an undergraduate research assistant at the Functional Imaging and Naturalistic Neuroscience Lab (FINN Lab) and toward the end of the fall term, my research mentor Katie (Kathryn O'Nell, a graduate student interested in cognitive psychology) told me about a new paper idea she has. When I first heard about Katie's vision for the experiment–and what part of neuroscience Katie's idea revolves around (naturalistic neuroscience)—I was confused and needed to ask Katie a number of clarifying questions. (And at the end of those questions I was still very confused.)
That's my baby sister Albena. I guess even the most exciting of research projects can't seduce you enough to not give her all your attention :)
But then I went home and started reading through the list of scientific papers Katie gave me. I never thought that a scientific paper would make my heart beat so fast (it's usually fantasy novels that achieve this feat). And I never thought that I'd be reading out loud passages from those papers to friends just because I'm in love with the ideas. I also noticed that working for the lab was now my favorite way to be productive (meaning, I was procrastinating on class work but still getting SOME work done). And I just noticed today how I was itching to do something to feel productive again and it was the very same list of neuroscience papers that popped to mine. There's still a paper or two on that list that I still haven't read…
That's how I realized some research projects are a good fit for me. Other projects are an excellent fit. :)
Starting college in a new country is a big leap, but with orientation programs, cultural connections, and helpful resources, Dartmouth quickly became more than just a campus—it became home.
