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.
Physics 3: General Physics I (and this blog post) exists for the sake of people who don't plan to go into physics or engineering but need physics as part of their major or pre-health requirements. I'm not pre-health, but I'm majoring in neuroscience, and one of the prerequisites for the major is a physics class.
Occom Pond on a nice October morning, right before my PHYS 3 lecture.
I had to choose between taking chemistry or physics as my science prerequisite. I had already taken a lot of chemistry classes in high school, and I decided that I probably had a more significant knowledge gap in the domain of physics than chemistry. I thought about the times when I got confused in neuroscience and realized that the brain phenomena that confuse me the most always involve physics
That's how I found myself in the big auditorium-like room in Wilder Hall (building home to the physics department), taking Physics 3 with Professor Ryan Hickox. Physics 3 is a really fun class, and I'm not qualifying it as "fun" just because I'm nice or because that's the general phrase ("Oh, yeah, it's a fun class"). Physics 3 is FUN—at least during the lectures—because Professor Hickox does his best to illustrate EVERY phenomenon we learn about with demonstration in real life and in real time
So far, Professor Hickox has come to class in roller skates to demonstrate friction and Newton's third law of motion. He's shot a golf ball at a target suspended from the ceiling (to demonstrate that even if the target falls, the golf ball will still hit it). He's driven a small car propelled forward by a fire extinguisher. He's climbed a twenty-foot ladder to drop off two lead balls. He's crashed a cannonball pendulum into a huge gray brick in the middle of the classroom...
The aforementioned brick after the damage was done.
And he does all that because he trusts physics. You see, he's got faith that the physics he teaches us is actually TRUE and the world will act according to his expectations
Ok, now, seriously.
I don't really think of PHYS 3 as a class I'm taking just for neuroscience. These days, I find myself thinking about Physics 3 as the class that will fill in the gaps in my understanding of the physical world, of the little things that you notice and wonder about and have a fuzzy understanding from high-school physics but that you could never coherently explain even if your life depended on it. Hopefully, by the end of this term, I'll be able to explain some of the things that have always puzzled me and can give satisfying answers to my baby sister when she grows up and enters the toddler stage of constantly asking "Why? Why? Why?
Please notice the rainbow, that's the whole point of this image.
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!
Every Dartmouth student is required to demonstrate proficiency in a language other than English. Here's my experience navigating the language requirement!
