Kennedy Hamblen

At Long Last, I Start a Blog

Hi there, and happy summer! After four years at Dartmouth and hundreds of hours working in admissions, I'm finally getting my very own blog. My name's Kennedy, and I'm originally from just outside of Memphis, Tennessee, although I've lived in Illinois and Missouri as well. I first discovered Dartmouth during a winter college trip—my first time visiting New England!—and it was snowing. A lot. After I was accepted, I returned to campus during the spring. I shadowed a required introductory college writing class (Writing 5, for those in the know). Of all the classes being taught on campus, you'd expect this one to have a lot of sleeping students and lack of engagement... which was exactly the opposite of what I saw. Students were eager to talk about the material, and the professor was an enthusiastic, friendly guy and a wealth of knowledge. The class period passed by in a flash.

Stunned by what I felt was the best class I'd ever attended, I stepped out into the sunlight. All the Dartmouth students followed me. They wanted to know what I thought! Was I going to go to Dartmouth? Where else was I looking? Did I have questions for them? They were kind, thoughtful, funny people, who were shockingly down-to-earth considering their achievements and intelligence. If other classes were like the one I'd just attended, I knew I had to come here.

I matriculated in the fall of '19, and began falling in love with Dartmouth just as COVID happened. With the help of the D-Plan, I took time off during COVID to do internships: one at the University Press of Mississippi, and another at the library of the United States Naval Observatory in D.C. I returned to classes and Hanover in the summer of 2021 and have been reluctant to leave the Upper Valley every since. I've worked full-time with admissions during my breaks and off-terms, and I was lucky enough to be hired as a senior fellow just a few months ago! I'm a student employee in the library as well. I'm doing research with Professor Tanoukhi's Meme Working Group, where we hope to present a paper at a conference this upcoming winter. And I'm writing an honors thesis this year on literature and narcotics—think William Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson, Thomas De Quincy, Baudelaire, Witkacy... you get the picture.

This is how my studying usually looks... in this picture, you can see I've not gotten too far yet in the essay writing process!

I'm a huge book geek—my favorite book of all time is Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (I wrote my Common App essay about it, in fact). I also love video games like Civilization V, Cities: Skylines, and the Sims franchise. And I'm semi-ironically obsessed with Riverdale, Gossip Girl, and Pretty Little Liars. I live off campus, about a five-minute walk from the admissions building, where you can find me cooking up a storm, chilling on my porch, or cleaning the vinyl records I've just bought from Hanover's record store. I'll be applying to law school this year, so if you're a rising high school senior and reading this, don't worry—we're in the same boat.

Dartmouth is an extremely rewarding place for anyone who loves to learn. And it's that way because of the people. There are a ton of things I love about Dartmouth—for instance, waking up and seeing the beautiful tree-covered hills in the distance, walking to a local coffee shop, reading books in Sanborn—but its best attribute are the people it attracts. The faculty love to teach, and they have undoubtedly pushed me to become a better student. The students love to learn, and I learn a lot from them too. I'm not sure there's many other places where I could say I learn something brand new every day, even when I'm not in class. So, with this blog, I hope to draw even more intellectually curious students to the fantastic college that is Dartmouth.