Welcome to the woods! My name is Matt Catrambone and I'm super excited to be joining the People, Places, Pines team as a new blogger. As of now, I am majoring in biology and quantitative social science (QSS), but who knows where I will end up! I will be sharing my journey as I try out classes, activities and research opportunities in various departments. Outside of the classroom, I like to listen to music, hike, ski and explore the surrounding area with my friends. Nice to meet you all!
Coming in with very little programming experience, I was pleasantly surprised by the beginner-friendly nature of this course. Although a very fast-paced course, CS1 gave me the academic confidence I needed my freshman fall. I was able to code games, maps and drawings all in 10 weeks, always surrounded by help from Vasanta (our lovely professor) and over 20 teaching assistants. I also made some close friends through the course, so I would highly, highly recommend it to anyone.
This has been my favorite class at Dartmouth thus far. Co-taught by a married couple, the introductory course fostered a challenging, yet welcoming environment for mainly first-year students. After learning about basics in epidemiology, immunology, microbiology and statistics, we dedicated entire lectures to specifically learn about over ten infectious diseases. I particularly enjoyed understanding treatment methods (vaccine, drug discovery, prevention) from both the scientific and epidemiological points-of-view, and the connections we made to current events. Now, I can confidently contribute to conversations about topics I used to be intimidated of.
A field that is often dominated by buzzwords and fear-mongering headlines, global health is a fascinating field that I was initially hesitant to engage with. And I'm so happy I did. Anne Sosin as a lovely professor who prioritized engagement and curiosity. Through weekly discussion posts, diverse sets of readings, three papers and a case study, we were able to explore four large areas of global health in conjunction with our interests. I focused on how rural health inequities connect to structural violence, colonialism, and biomedicine/technology advances. I was definitely one of the younger, less experienced students in the course, but the support was so accessible that I recommend this course to anyone interested!
Hi everyone! It's been a few weeks since my last post, but I'm very excited to be back. I want to offer a little crash course into what my term has been like thus far. Sophomore year is definitely busier and more eventful (at least so far) but it's been very enjoyable and super nice to get back into a routine.
This term, I'm taking a cell biology "foundations" lecture-style class (BIOL12), an introduction to data analysis course, (QSS15) and an anthropology research seminar (ANTH18). The most time-intensive one has definitely been biology course since it has a lab section. However, I've been pleasantly surprised about how applicable the course content is to my lab work. After working in labs, the past two years, I never had a formal introduction into certain assays, but since most of BIOL12 is problem-based, I've gotten exposure to designing experimental procedures related to cell and protein activity. Even though my QSS course has also been quite time-intensive, it has been a crash course into a very useful skill: R. The outcome of the course is very tangible and applicable to further research positions or jobs I may work in the future. And, more importantly, the professor is very approachable and 'user-friendly' which is something relatively hard to find in an intro class like this. Finally, my favorite course this term is my ANTH class. Instead of exams and papers, we work on a term-long mini-ethnography on a topic of our choice. At the beginning of the course, we learned about the research process and anthropology as a discipline, and now, the lectures are centered around the different stages of qualitative work. My project explores how Hanover and Norwich residents – both those in Upper Valley families and newcomers – imagine rurality and 'the rural experience.' I am interested in better situating these towns within the Upper Valley and rural America, in general. At this stage, I am conducting interviews with community residents – talk about hands-on!
Outside of the classroom, I started at the Lee Lab. After working in a microbiology and infectious disease lab over the summer, I wanted to further delve into vaccines and immunoengineering, so I decided to reach out to the professor. It ended up working out! Right now, I'm still in a bit of an orientation phase, but I'm really enjoying how organized the projects are and how flexible the schedule is. I'm currently working with a post-doc where we are generating site-directed vectors for a mammalian antibody display library.
Apart from this lab, I'm continuing with DREAM – the mentoring program I was a part of last year – as the programming chair. I'm also working in Admissions and currently apply to some of Dartmouth's pre-professional clubs related to business and STEM. I'll get back to you on how that goes!
Here are some photos on what I've been getting up to outside the classroom! I hope you guys enjoyed this update!
Chilling at the river with friends!
Went to a farm concert every Thursday with friends until it closed!
Every Dartmouth student is required to demonstrate proficiency in a language other than English. Here's my experience navigating the language requirement!
