Sarah LeHan

I. B. Tauris, the academic publishing house where I interned this winter, invited me to the biweekly meetings where editors and executives gathered to pitch new books. From my hours of observation, I gleaned significant insight into how the company was run. I also learned about what they valued in a proposal. As an aspiring writer, I found it invaluable to see what editors and executives sought in prospective projects.

And then, of course, there were the proposals themselves, packet after packet pitching books with titles like Contraception in Postwar British Society, Family Life in Soviet Lithuania, Hidden Cameras of the Holocaust, and Manhattan: A Literary Guide for Travelers. From Soviet soccer and Argentinian politics, to eighteenth-century London landlords and ancient Timbuktu, the topics were far more interesting (at least to me) than sales charts and pie graphs!

One post, about WWI soldiers and suffragettes, I wrote for the 100th anniversary of British women winning the vote. Another post, about a politician who lowered food prices, I photographed in a local grocery’s bread aisle. Quick and creative, Instagram became my favorite marketing task.

I name this task in my top five not because copying and pasting ISBNs was particularly fascinating (although I did enjoy sneak peeks at book summaries) but because it provided the perfect complement to podcasts. From NPR’s Code Switch and Hidden Brain to BBC 4’s In Our Time and Nordic Food Lab’s, well, Nordic Food Lab, I learned about brain science, sociology, current events, food history…and an industry that I might someday like to join! While I’m glad metadata was just one of my many assignments, it was, as my co-worker put it, a “meditative” way to spend Friday afternoons.

 Podcast journalist Laura Sim ‘16 told me last summer that, fifteen months after graduation, these cookies still called to her heart. Always warm, always gooey, and always delectable, these dining hall staples provide a melt-in-your-mouth conclusion to many a memorable conversation.

You can’t beat the oldest and largest outing club in the country. The DOC’s renown means that many a student arrives with outdoor exploration in mind—and that its ethos of adventure, reflection, independence, and collaboration pervades entire swathes of campus life. Even if your schedule fills up and you can’t do official trips as often as you would like, there’s a plethora of people both inside and outside the club who are up to sled or skate or cross-country ski or run or canoe or climb buildings or…anything else you can imagine.

Dartmouth off-campus programs dive into study across the country and the world. Led by Dartmouth professors and filled with Dartmouth students, these programs study everything from Arabic in Morocco to geology in the Rockies. Ten-week terms enable students to study abroad no matter their major—and to do so anywhere from one to three times (or more, counting off terms).