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.
Spring at Dartmouth might be my favorite season. The green color is finally returning to the trees and the Green (which used to look like "the White" and then "the [muddy] Brown"). It's light outside as early as six thirty in the morning and as late as eight in the evening. And most importantly, (glance up at the title), yup.
The birds are coming back from their winter migration, and the DOC (the Dartmouth Outing Club) is leading more trips than any time before. There are canoeing and kayaking trips, there are hiking trips, and there are birding trips!
Last week, Flora and Fauna (FnF) trip leader Ada took us to the Vermont Institute of Natural Science (VINS) to attend an owl festival. We were a group of six or seven students, some of us really excited about birds, others merely looking for something fun to do over the weekend, and we saw some really cool owls. We traveled for twenty minutes and then we attended a few interactive lectures about a falcon and a few owls.
A barred owl we saw at VINS
This week, FnF leader Wyatt took us up the Connecticut River to look at some migratory birds. We saw bald eagles, red-winged blackbirds, a kingfisher, an osprey. All we had to do to see such a plethora of species was to drive along the river and the nearby brooks and look around with our binoculars. The DOC has its collection of bird guides and binoculars everybody has access to!
A red-winged blackbird
And next week, FnF chair Duda is taking a group of students, me included, to a DOC-owned cabin in the woods to search for owls. That's gonna be owl-citing!
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!
