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.
August 2023 feels like a life-time ago, and yet it feels like my first year at Dartmouth was too short. When the last week of May rolled by, I couldn't believe that I was about to have a few final exams and then fly home—I felt like the fun had just begun. Campus had never seemed more full of amazing people I wanted to talk to and exciting activities I wanted to try out. People were saying, "Okay, I'm ready to take a break from college now," but I was thinking, "Okay, I'm ready to take it to the next level!"
What's the next level? I don't know. I'll have to wait till my sophomore year to find out (man that's gonna be so much waiting!). All I can do now is look back at a fantastic first year of adventures, studies, and occasional mishaps, and marvel at the fact that—"Oh, wait–this all happened to me! Unbelievable."
One of the most freshman-year-defining lessons I learned over these nine months is that you can't force yourself to make a decision you'll have to make N months from now NOW.
In high school, knowing that you have some time to actually go to college and decide what your major is, you don't worry TOO much about it. But once you become a college freshman and everybody starts asking you, "So what are you gonna do in life?", you feel this urgency to pick a major and have a clear answer.
Dartmouth students don't have to declare a major until their sophomore year, and no one here really asks you to pick one early; advisors and deans tell you to explore and try out different things, but I hated the fact that I didn't have a solid answer for people when they asked me what I was going to do with my life. So I tried to give an answer–only that my answer seemed to change every other week!
For full transparency, before going back to my tenth-grade dream of studying neuroscience, I bounced around a NUMBER of majors: first, I thought I'd do Film and Media Studies (at least a minor); then, I thought I'd do Comparative Literature; then English Literature; then Environmental Studies; then Cognitive Science; maybe Computer Science; how about Economics…?
And finally, I took a neuroscience class, and I was amazed at the quiet confidence I felt about it. There was no doubt nagging me at the back of my mind, no prickly feeling at the pit of my stomach. There wasn't any euphoria either. I've had moments where I was thinking, "Maybe this is it! Maybe cog sci IS my major!" No such ecstatic excitement for neuroscience. That's why I said "quiet confidence"—neuroscience felt so natural and obvious that I didn't need to shout it out anywhere.
No matter how much planning or thinking or OVERthinking I did, nothing helped me pick my major except for actually taking a class and seeing how my mind and body reacted to it. I'm a fantasy writer; I like to see how everything plays out in my head first; I rely on imagination and ridiculous amounts of hypotheses. But some things you need to experience, THEN make your decision. And you might need to wait for the right moment to experience them. Or at least I did.
In other words: my first year taught me to be patient because things will always work out.
I applied through Questbridge's National College Match, but did not match. To others who also did not match, this is not the end of your application process! Here's what I did following match decision day.
Walking around the Wellelsey campus, it's clear that it was built with intentional incorporation of the surrounding nature. The architecture of many buildings were also mindfully crafted to support Wellesley's unique principles.
My first time in Chicago at the Society of Women Engineers Conference in Chicago, Illinois! Fully funded by Dartmouth, I had a great time meeting amazing companies and getting to know fellow women engineers.
Through Dartmouth's Guarini Institute for International Study, I am getting to take classes and experience life at Wellesley College, an all-women's school!
Academics can be challenging at Dartmouth. But there are lots of groups across campus here to support you through your academic journey. Read on for my experience asking for help and a few organizations that might be helpful to you!
