My Favorite Professor
Who is your favorite professor at Dartmouth and why?
You know, this may easily be the hardest question I've ever answered on this blog. Not because I don't know most of my professors. Quite the opposite. In fact, I've had so many amazing professors that I just simply don't know who to choose from!
Don't get me wrong, there are some pretty clear candidates. A few that immediately come to mind are:
Professors Amanda Amodeo, who was my genetics class professor and is a super passionate lecturer doing some really cool research into cell development
Professor Jeremy Sabella, who was a really cool Religion professor that made my first term at Dartmouth special by letting me talk to him for hours about Religious ideology in Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly just for the heck of it
Professor Eng-Beng Lim, my professor for Gender and Sexuality in Asian American Literature who is the reason I, a few days ago, got to sit down and talk to a reporter about my thoughts about the need for Asian American studies here at Dartmouth.
Each of these professors are absolutely amazing, and I could answer your questions with any one of their names and not regret a thing.
But for now I'd say that my favorite professor is my research faculty mentor Professor Xiaofeng Wang (affiliated with the Geisel School of Medicine). I first got to know Professor Wang after he put up an ad on the Dartmouth website saying that he was interested in recruiting undergraduate research assistants. And, ever since I started working under him, I've been so lucky to have built a good relationship with him. Not only has he given me the opportunity to engage in real, meaningful research and trusts me to take some agency and give me a voice in the products I work on (including the privilege of voicing my disagreement if I don't think something should be done a certain way), he also takes time helping me outside the lab. When I mentioned off hand that my vacuum broke (I live off campus), he personally drove over to drop off his old vacuum he was coincidentally about to throw out anyways. And I don't mean some dinky vacuum. I mean like a Shark vacuum. Which, if you're not as into vacuums as I am, is a really, really good vacuum.
And that's what I love about Dartmouth. It's rare that you have professors so invested in students' education as the professors I listed above are. But, it's even rarer that you see professors that care about their students' holistic well-being as much as these professors did for me. We have that here at Dartmouth. And honestly? You'd be hard pressed to find that anywhere else.