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!
The Hill Winds in Our Veins: Unlocking the Outdoors @ Dartmouth
"They have the still North in their hearts,
The hill winds in their veins,
And the granite of New Hampshire
In their muscles and their brains."
Every day at 6 PM, the Baker Library Bell Tower plays the alma mater. One full month after moving to this "College on a hill," I found the lyrics of our alma mater a precise description of my new college life.
As someone who has lived in a bustling city for my entire life, I am constantly astounded by the wealth of convenient and mostly cost-free outdoor opportunities that this place offers.
My Dartmouth experience kickstarted with a sunrike (sunrise-hike) to Mt. Moosilauke during the first year trip. Waking up at 3 AM in a cabin and hiking 4 miles in pitch dark, we hiked with the Milky Way above us, the frogs' croaking and birds' chirping surrounding us, and reached the peak with the brisk hill winds tousling our hair (at the fastest speed that I've ever experienced). When the sun rose and painted half the sky fiery red and golden, our whole sunrike group cheered in some sort of happiness that words fall short to describe. Happy for the "feat" that we just accomplished, for the simple yet boundless freedom at the moment, or for the magical bonds crystalized through this starry experience…
As the official school year kicked off, my outdoor adventures only became more enriching. The gorgeous Occom Pond lies right next to my dorm, with the picturesque Pine Park gracing the opposite bank. I found solace in jogging around Occom Pond after mornings filled with back-to-back classes. On more relaxing weekend mornings, I love hiking through Pine Park with my floormates, coming across some deer from time to time.
One other thing that I love to do is to browse the Dartmouth Outing Club (DOC) Trailhead—this oldest and largest collegiate outing club in the country hosts a variety of (FREE) trips around the week. In just the past few weeks, I've had my first time kayaking and canoeing in the Connecticut River, and I love the inner peace I felt rowing a small boat in the middle of a calm river.
It's easy to forget how easy it is to access walking trails during the hustle of a Dartmouth term. As graduation nears, I am reminded of how special it is to step off campus and enjoy quiet moments in nature.
With a solar eclipse sweeping across North America for the first time in nearly seven years on April 8th came a road-trip with hundreds of other Dartmouth students to a zone of totality near campus: St. Johnsbury, Vermont!
