Hello! My name is Maximiliano (or Max, if it's easier) and I'm a '28 from East Oakland, California. I plan to study Engineering, possibly modified with CS. Outside of my academics, I like playing volleyball, soccer, and swimming. I love the outdoors, so I hope to share some of my adventures on this blog. I enjoy video games, Rubik's cubes, and watching anime. I am excited for my four years at Dartmouth and I hope to share some of my fun experiences with you!
Going home for the six week break in between Fall and Winter term (Winterim), isn't something everyone gets to do, so I'm extremely grateful that I was able to spend the Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's holidays with my family. After that, I was on my way back to Hanover and ready to start my First-Year Winter.
I left Dartmouth before it started snowing in Hanover, so it was an immediate shock once I got off the Dartmouth Coach. There was snow everywhere, the Green was now white, not green, and it was freezing. Unfortunately I had left my gloves and good jacket in my dorm so the walk to my dorm was rough, to say the least. However, I forgot all about the cold once I reached my dorm, French Hall. Home sweet home. I was greeted by many friendly faces in the common room playing card games, and there were a couple people playing ping pong. Typical of French's common room, but a heartwarming sight nonetheless. I said hello to a couple of my friends, unpacked my suitcases, and called it a night.
I flew in on a Saturday, which means I woke up Sunday morning ready for one of my favorite parts of every week. DartSlam!! DartSlam is a volleyball club on campus run by graduate students but open to the entire Dartmouth community. Club activities run from 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM and are divided into sections like Skills work, Beginner/Intermediate, and Advanced Play. There's volleyball for players of all levels! Since I spent so much of high school playing volleyball, it's been really nice to continue enjoying the sport here at Dartmouth. In fact, there's an intramural tournament this term that I hope to join (and win). Also, there are many leagues of intramural volleyball offered in the Spring, so I also hope to play then.
I didn't think campus could get much more beautiful or magical, but I was wrong. Once you get over the chilly temperatures and the occasional gust of wind, winter is truly one of the most beautiful seasons. Every walk is beautiful (and a little slippery), and you can't help but smile as you walk across campus. In fact, it's so beautiful that I almost regret not being on campus for the holidays. I bet Christmas and New Year's are extremely beautiful in Hanover, especially when it's snowing.
Overall, I'm very happy to be at Dartmouth for the Winter term. Now that I'm a lot more familiar with pretty much everything on campus, I know this term is going to be very productive and exciting. My classes are as follows. Writing 5:Future Fantasies: Imagining the Posthuman, Computer Science 1:Introduction to Programming and Computation, and Math 13: Calculus of Vector-Valued Functions. I will be completing my First-Year Writing requirement and continuing to work on my Engineering prerequisites this term. I'm excited to have new classes (a true gift of Dartmouth's 10-week quarter system) and continue to participate in my favorite activities like DartSlam, SEAD (Strengthening Educational Access with Dartmouth), and SHPE (Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers). Thank you for reading and stay tuned for more blog posts!
In my freshman year, I wrote a blog revisiting my decision of attending Dartmouth College. Now that more than a year has passed, I would love to revisit my decision again, with a more realistic lens.
