Hi everyone! I'm Tess, and I live 30 minutes outside of London. I love everything Dartmouth, including the sunsets, the traditions, the classes, and the merch. I'm super excited to experience everything I read about in this blog over the next four years. Come along with me as I explore the ins and outs of life in the woods.
A course that definitely surprised me, I did not know what to expect and had very little philosophical knowledge before taking this course. It was a mixture of current and past readings, with the final project to make a group video, testing my technological ability. Professor Bumpus was amazing, and I got to know her more when I took her to breakfast at Pine through the Take Your Professor to Lunch Program.
I was recommended to take a history course, specifically a history course with Professor Lu, and it has not disappointed! This course is cross listed with Asian Studies, my major, but it has made me consider a history minor... We start every class off with a song relating to the topic of that class, and then we move on to discussion based activities.
Although I had never done Model United Nations in high school, I was super excited about the prospect of starting it here at Dartmouth. And so, during our club fair held on the Green, I signed up for Dartmouth's MUN team, what we call DartMUN.
The DartMUN team!
Our preparation began week three of Fall term, where we worked as a committee to create background guides for the over 400 high school delegates that would be attending our conference. I was part of the Historical Joint Crisis Committee (HJCC), and we decided to look at the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. We would meet weekly, and also have socials, such as cabin night at a cabin owned by Dartmouth about twenty minutes.
Winter term mainly consisted of training—looking at parliamentary procedure, how to deal with setbacks that arise and backroom crisis training. As part of the backroom, our job is to create character arcs and steer the storyline of the committee. I would say it's the most fun part of MUN. We get to influence the committee how we want, keeping the delegates on their toes.
The "Best Delegate" gavel
Our conference was the first weekend of this spring term, lasting Friday through Sunday. In preparation for this, we compiled booklets, got the rooms ready, and ran last-minute logistic checks to ensure everything was running smoothly. Our opening ceremony was Friday evening, followed by our first committee session. In this session, we tried to steer the committee true to what actually happened during the Boxer Rebellion, with varying degrees of success.
Some of the crisis notes our delegates wrote to us
Over the course of the next two days, HJCC Boxer Rebellion had a successful yet fun and chaotic weekend. There was no shortage of internal intrigue and communication between the delegates. We began with two sides in direct conflict, and in running a historical simulation, our nearly 40 delegates arrived at a dramatically different outcome. There were assassinations, trials, and sly espionage. The Empress Dowager was a successful businesswoman, their chair was ousted unceremoniously and memorialized in a national holiday, and there were coups left and right. J-Pop was invented for propaganda. The Russian Revolution came more than a decade early. The Boxer committee was so cool that multiple delegates jumped ship. Despite all the organized chaos, the delegates successfully came together and found peace at the end of the day. Delegates always came to the committee with an open mind, a willingness to collaborate, and very, very creative solutions.
Our chair reincarnated as Winnie the Pooh
Part of DartMUN was to fundraise for a local charity. With a target of $250 in our committee, if our delegates reached that, our chairs would pie each other in the face. The challenge was accepted and completed.
Pie-ing in process
All in all, it was a successful, albeit tiring, weekend. I am already looking forward to DartMUN 2026, and seeing what wild, brilliant, and unexpected twists next year's delegates will bring to the table.
In my freshman year, I wrote a blog revisiting my decision of attending Dartmouth College. Now that more than a year has passed, I would love to revisit my decision again, with a more realistic lens.
As a practicing Christian, my faith has always been the foundation of my life. Coming into college, I didn't want to lose that essential part of my identity. I wanted to deepen it. That's when I found Cru — and it changed everything.
