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 love all branches of science, from particle physics to neuroscience, and I'm also steadily falling in love with journalism and telling real stories about real people, for once. I also love hiking, bird-watching, climbing, and em dashes.
Apart from taking all of your major courses and completing your distributive and foreign language requirements as a Dartmouth student, you also need to complete three physical education (PE) courses. Fortunately, there are many options to choose from, including dance groups and club sports. To complete my first PE credit, I decided to take on archery this term.
The first time I used a bow in my life was probably when I was six years old. I really wanted to be like Robin Hood, because this was my favorite Disney movie, and my dad carved me a bow out of a wooden stick. Then he tied a rope to it and made me three arrows (of a few smaller sticks). I also had a green hat made out of a lilac's leaf and a feather sticking out of my leaf-hat. I was the real Robin Hood :).
As with every cool possession you have when you're a kid, I lost my bow. To be honest, I think I first lost my arrows, THEN my bow. Or… you know what? I actually lost my hat first. Long story short, I gave up archery for a l-o-n-g time. Until this term!
I was a little skeptical and afraid that I was not going to like archery at all–what if I'm helplessly bad at it? Well… the first three arrows I shot went a meter (sorry, three feet) over the target and then went crashing down to the ground as they hit the heavy net behind the target. But there was progress! The second three arrows landed on the blue and black markings of the target. Before I could shoot my third batch of arrows, though, Eric and Shawn taped a doll to the target. We all agreed that it was best not to give it a name…
So the third time I shot… Well… Let's just say that you can, after all, make a Robin Hood out of me.
It's easy to forget how easy it is to access walking trails during the hustle of a Dartmouth term. As graduation nears, I am reminded of how special it is to step off campus and enjoy quiet moments in nature.
With a solar eclipse sweeping across North America for the first time in nearly seven years on April 8th came a road-trip with hundreds of other Dartmouth students to a zone of totality near campus: St. Johnsbury, Vermont!
After returning from an enriching study abroad program, I'm diving into a bustling spring semester here at Dartmouth. Here are my four courses I'm taking this term!
Dartmouth's liberal arts curriculum pushes students to explore new departments and draw connections between seemingly disparate disciplines. Come explore my Economics, Physics, and Asian, Societies, Cultures, and Languages classes!
