Sawasdee ka! I'm Memo, a '26 (thankfully), and I'm from the sunny city of Bangkok, Thailand. Despite being terrible at hiking and tolerating the cold, here I am in the middle of the woods. I'm leaning toward a CS modified with Digital Arts major and a QSS minor, but I have no idea. Simply put, I will be doing a lot of exploring. Fun times! Anyways, stick around and read my blogs. Please. I will keep you informed and well entertained. :)
Coming in with some Python background, I still find this class challenging. Yet, I always enjoy going to Vasanta's lectures and working on the short assignments with the help of the TAs. Awesome experience.
Professor Pierson taught the class really well—his lectures always start with a hook that keeps me engaged. Although the material is definitely more challenging than the prior class, I learned a whole lot more. My CS1 professor suggested we learn Java before taking CS10 (she even sent us resources for it!), but of course, I didn't. It was a language I continued picking up as I did my short assignments and PSETs with my partner. The workload is not light; however, I felt like everything was worth learning!
Walking into my first computer science class at Dartmouth, I was not sure what to expect. Frankly, I was intimidated by the class material, and my lack of experience was concerning. However, by the first week, I was introduced to various resources available to all the students! These include recitation hours, where you get the chance to rehearse each week's material with an undergraduate teaching assistant (TA) and office hours, where you can ask the TAs questions on your assignments. My recitation leader (the TA in charge of my assigned recitation hour) not only carefully explained novel concepts to me, but he also swiftly replied to any questions I had before exams or due dates. He played a large role in my success journey. On top of having your recitation leader, you can walk into any TA's office hours. These office hours happen all the time—by all the time, I mean all the time. Many sessions are offered on weekdays, but these TAs work on the weekends too! If you have a bug in your code or a topic that you haven't fully grasped, you can head right over to the ECSC (Engineering and Computer Science Center) building.
After considering the amount of time I've spent in ECSC as a CS1 (Introduction to Programming and Computation) student, I decided to become a TA this term instead! It has been exactly a year since I took CS1 with Vasanta (Professor Kommineni), and getting to participate in the class from a different perspective has been eye-opening. When I was a student, I initially felt afraid to ask questions because I didn't want to be perceived as a clueless first-year. Looking back, I should've asked way more questions. I am always so happy to help out CS1 students during my office hours—I'm so glad when they finally see their code running!
I also used to be afraid to mess up my code. What I mean by that is I only ran my program if I believed it to be 100% correct. My mindset changed after attending an office hour where, instead of answering my hypothetical questions, the TA told me to "just run it." That was exactly what I did. Of course, it didn't give me the right output, but it encouraged me to be more experimental with my solutions. As a TA now, my goal is to support other students to do the same.
If you've read this far and realized you don't plan on taking CS1 ever, this is still for you. The good news is that these resources are also available in other classes and departments! When I was taking QSS17 or GOVT16 (Data Visualization) and PSYC1 (Introductory Psychology), there were group tutoring sessions that students could attend weekly. In my writing classes and any other classes, I could always set up office hours with the professors and TAs.
As a student here, I know that there are resources readily available for me, and that's why my experience in classes has been wonderful so far. I know that I will be supported well throughout my experience here.
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!
