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.
I'm spending this summer—the summer between my first and sophomore year at Dartmouth—back at home. The past two terms at Dartmouth, I was debating a lot whether to find some opportunity in the US and stay for the summer or go back home. In the end, my sister made the decision for me.
This, by the way, is my sister:
My sister Albena, who is only happy for 15 short minutes before she gets sleepy/hungry/cranky again
She was born two days after I landed in Bulgaria, and for a while it wasn't clear if she'll actually wait for me to finish final exams and get back home. She waited. And now I'm spending one summer with my family and my baby sister because my sophomore summer–and every summer to come, probably—is likely to be much busier than this one.
Apart from changing diapers, I'm also trying to get a headstart in some of the classes I'll be taking next term. In Fall 24, I'll be taking Physics 3, a prerequisite for the Neuroscience major, Computer Science 10, a prerequisite for the Computer Science major, and PSYC 40 Computational Neuroscience, an elective course that will count toward my neuroscience major.
To prepare, I found online old syllabi of the courses (I actually haven't looked up anything about the physics course), and I'm now just going through the material (students don't really need to do this—most professors will post your course syllabus on your course page at the start of the term. I'm just checking them early because... why not?). And the reason I'm sharing this with you is because I like to prepare for my future courses by finding old syllabi online, so a prospective student like you can learn what it's like to take a given Dartmouth course, by finding its syllabus online.
Reading neuroscience papers with my cat Mermione
COSC 10 (Object Oriented Programming) has, in fact, a whole website dedicated to the course. Here'sthe syllabus from Winter 24, when professor Tim Pearson taught the class. You can see the class schedule and linked in it, the lecture notes, plus all the needed software. Old syllabi are also very useful when choosing what classes to take.
The old syllabus I found for PSYC 40, Computational Neuroscience, is a bit less fancy than the COSC 10 one. There isn't a whole website–just a PDF file–but it's a file you can find as easily as I did if you just google "Computational Neuroscience Dartmouth syllabus."
Now, you won't be able to access ALL courses' syllabi; some syllabi are accessible only to people in the Dartmouth community. But you can definitely find open syllabi, like the CS and neuroscience ones I showed you, that will allow you to get a feel of what a normal 10-week term at Dartmouth might look like.
