你好! or hi! My name is Yutong, but feel free to call me Taylor. I'm a '27 from Beijing, China. This will be my first time living ten thousand miles away from home and my first time embracing the New England winter, which makes everything more exciting! I'm also a big fan of Dartmouth Outing Club, and you can find me canoeing in the Connecticut River or taking a walk at Pine Park. I can't wait to show you my college life with my blogs!
Coming to Dartmouth with a solid background in French (Delf B2), I find French 3 a perfect fit for me -- it helps me to consolidate a lot of key grammar and vocabs, and fun weekly cultural activities like coffee hours and french lunch table offers me chances to relax in busy times. While the class is very rigorous and requires a lot of hard work, my professor is so nice and makes the class very fun! I also look forward to going to Dartmouth's Toulouse LSA program after completion of this class!
This course explores how Buddhist concepts of embodiment affect daily life and society in Southeast Asian contexts, and how the intersection of religion, sexuality, and gender impact broader understandings of authority, wisdom, beauty, death, and loyalty. The class takes on many forms beyond mere lectures -- a visit to the Hood Museum of Art, mindfulness practices, and small Buddha-crafting projects. Our professor (the sweetest Prof. MK Long) also invites many of her colleagues at other institutes as guest lecturers to our class so that we can learn from real experts specializing in different countries in Southeast Asia. I have learned a lot from the class and decided to become a religion major after this course!
Having never enjoyed math classes before college, I'm surprised (again) by how I'm becoming a math major and falling in love with math here! My professor (Prof. Shu Longmei, who graduated from the best university in my hometown) is incredibly good at teaching the concepts -- not just explaining things clearly but also showing us the beauty and elegance of calculus. I really look forward to taking more math classes in the future!
This term, I enrolled in a course named "Buddhism, Gender, and Sexuality in Southeast Asia" with Professor MK Long. While I initially came to the classroom expecting to take notes during a 2-hour lecture, I was surprised by the diverse and dynamic nature of the course. I have found this course reflects Dartmouth's commitment to innovative teaching and the profound expertise of its faculty.
Just like Buddhism itself, my class is a blend of theories and practice. For example, When we were learning different Buddhist mindfulness practices, we had a faculty visit from the student wellness center to lead a guided meditation. This practice helps us not only better understand the Buddhist ideal of equanimity—awareness and detachment of bodily sense—but also cultivates our mindfulness of the present.
Another particularly engaging learning experience in class was our exploration of the 32 characteristics of the Buddha's "ultimate ideal body," our professor gave us clay and asked us to sculpt the "ideal Buddha" in our mind. Through the mini artistic creation that we made our own, we saw how the interpretive practice of art-making shapes Buddhist ideals of the body. Next week, as we move on to case studies of Buddhism, Gender, and Sexuality in Thailand, we will have a visiting scholar from Cornell University who specializes in Buddhism in Thailand to give us a lecture. We are even planning on having lunch at the local Thai restaurant as a class!
While all these innovative teaching methods already show how much time and effort our professor puts into her teaching, I'm still amazed by how much she cares about her students. Our class has a unique attendance-recording method: our professor will give us name cards for us to write down one thing about the class that we find particularly interesting, as well as one remaining question that we have. Our professor will select some questions to answer at the beginning of the next class, and she also carefully reads every one of our attendance cards, writes comments on them, and gives it back to us by the end of each unit.
Compared to listening to a professor lecturing in a massive lecture hall, I find Dartmouth's small-sized, highly interactive classes more engaging and vigorous intellectually. I'm constantly surprised by how much my professors know, how much they care about us, and how inspiring their courses are!
This spring in Spare Rib, the intersectional feminist zine and feminist collective on campus, has been quite busy and exciting with a bunch of new events. Keep reading to find out more!
What kind of classes do you take in a subject-based Foreign Study Program? Here's a rundown of my classes in the Music FSP in London to give you an idea of what academic life is like in the program!
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!
