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.
Computational Neuroscience with Professor Richard Granger is a multidisciplinary course taught by a multidisciplinary professor and designed for multidisciplinary thinkers. The class covered brain anatomy and physiology and the biology of learning; it covered linear algebra and the architectures and characteristics of several neural networks. Last, we had a module on "brain engineering"—how some brain circuits function and how we can get inspired by them as engineers.
The first focus of Discrete Math for Computer Science was learning to think like a mathematician: how do we use logic to find proofs to problems and our solutions? Next, we learned how to apply this thinking in computer science contexts — how do you prove that a recursive program works? How do you prove what its run-time is going to be? These were the kind of skills we were building in preparation for the next course in the theoretical computer science sequence: Algorithms. Before we can build algorithms, we need to know how to think about the steps we need to take to solve problems with the rigor of mathematical logic.
A week or two before starting my sophomore fall, I thought I was extremely well prepared for a new term at Dartmouth. "I've seen it all," I was thinking. "I've already been here one fall, I know how things work." I was relying on the maxim that history repeats itself and time is cyclic–I thought I knew what a fall term at Dartmouth looks like.
It was nothing like my first fall, and I had a number of experiences—academic, social, and professional–that I had never had before.
This term I'm also taking three STEM classes (CS 30 Discrete Math, CS 70 Intro to Applied Computer Science, and PSYC 38 Cognitive Neuroscience), and even though I already know what it feels like, work-load-wise and vibes-wise, to take three STEM classes in the same term, I'm yet to discover what taking two classes in the same department is going to be like. (This will be common for me in the future if I decide to indeed stick to my idea of a double major.)
In the fall, I also started working as adrill instructor for French 2 (Introductory French). Drill instructors help students practice their foreign-language speaking and pronunciation skills. I realized I loved this job—an unexpected realization on my part. This term, I might continue–or I might find another teaching opportunity. We'll see :)
Most importantly, last term, I started working at a neuroscience lab as an undergraduate research assistant. Through the FINN Lab (Functional Imaging and Naturalistic Neuroscience Lab), I learned about the life cycle of research papers, research ideas, and the inner workings of a neuroscience lab. This term I'll be continuing.
The view from our house in Bulgaria early one December morning–I love winter and I love winter terms :)
And even though I've already had a taste of all these activities—I'm wiser now. My sophomore fall surprised me and delighted me in terms of the new ideas, people, and passions I found at Dartmouth, even though I thought I had seen it all and knew how it all worked. I'm sure my sophomore winter will surprise and delight me as well. Over the next ten weeks (Dartmouth terms are ten weeks long), I'll keep you posted on those moments of delight and surprise. :)
When I arrived at Dartmouth, I assumed dorms were the only housing option. It wasn't until sophomore year that I discovered Max Kade House, a German-themed Living Learning Community, and realized what I had been missing.
