Aloha to the page of a wanderlusting writer juggling college life and several other hobbies into an eternally-short 24-hour day. I hope to shed light on the Dartmouth experience as I explore the brave new world of Hanover, NH and everything going to college here has to offer. In my free time, you can find me trying to learn a new language or building the perfect Spotify playlist (alternative/indie, anyone?). I hope you enjoy!
Taught by Gordon Henry, an Anishinaabe poet and author, this class taught me to explore Indigenous storytelling within digital contexts. I took this class with only seven other classmates, allowing us to really engage with films, comic books, and television shows in Indigenous languages or produced by Indigenous artists.
Taught by Timothy Pulju, this class taught me how to identify and understand how languages evolve over time and why. I analyzed and reconstructed fictional languages of imaginary nations in order to understand the link between language and culture, and ended up having such an appreciation for the complexity and beauty of language's place in history!
Taught by Lindsay Whaley, this class let me discover a newfound love for ancient apocalyptic literature. We analyzed ancient texts and compared them to modern apocalypses, looking at the zombie apocalypse phenomenon and other apocalypses in pop culture and comparing them to the ancient tradition of writing apocalypses. Additionally, I learned the Greek alphabet and now I can even stumble through ancient Greek passages.
FallNew Orleans, LA
Favorite Class: Native American Literature and the Law
Taught and organized by David Peterson, this class let me get into the shoes of a real linguist as we did fieldwork (virtually!!) with the Zophei language. I learned how to describe a never-before-learned language's phonology (sound system), how to characterize its grammar and words, and ultimately got to present my research to experts in the language family around the world in a workshop at the end of the term!
WinterHanover, NH
Favorite Class: Native American Literature and the Law
Taught by N. Bruce Duthu, this class taught me how Native literature can provide lens by which to evaluate, critique, and ultimately revise Federal Indian Law. During this class, I read works by Native authors like Tommy Orange and Louise Erdrich '76 alongside the opinions of definitive case opinions in American law and explained how literature can be a catalyst for Indigenous sovereignty.
Supervised by N. Bruce Duthu, I spent this off-term performing research after being awarded a Sophomore Research Scholarship to study contemporary Hawaiian cultural and linguistic revitalization. I studied 19th-century newspapers and contemporary Hawaiian texts in order to understand how Hawaiian language revitalization both past and present has advanced and continues to enable a contemporary bodied Hawaiian politic of sovereignty.
Taught by Laura McPherson, this class taught me about how languages create meaning through words. During this class, I learned how to analyze different languages' morphological processes and compare different approaches within the field as to morphological structures.
Taught by N. Bruce Duthu, this class offered me a glimpse into the lived realities of Native people in Indian Country Today. I learned about the economic, social, cultural, and historical roots for the struggles of Indigenous people today within the United States, and was able to write about the contemporary battle for Native Hawaiian visibility and Hawaiian sovereignty.
Taught by Laura McPherson, this class taught me how to engage in language documentation and how, as a linguist, we can put our skills to use to help communities seeking to document and revitalize their languages. I worked on the Satawalese language, spoken on the island of Satawal in the Federated States of Micronesia. Ultimately, my team created two dictionaries - one in English, one in Hawaiian, a website, and several materials that focused on the Satawalese tradition of wayfinding and non-instrumental ocean navigation.
Taught by Charles Eastman fellow Sunaina Kale, this class taught me about the role of sound in delineating, conceiving, and comprehending relations between people and the land in Indigenous musical traditions. Over the course of the class, we discussed Indigenous musicians, listened to music from Native peoples around the world, heard from masterful Indigenous musicians, and ultimately presented a project that creatively analyzed a song of our choice. My project focused on the song "Ask Yourself" by Foster the People, and I wrote a poem that integrated aspects of Indigenous languages and worldviews to answer questions posed by the song.
This term, I formally began the research process for my upcoming honors thesis in the Linguistics department on Hawaiian semantics! While living in Hanover, I also began working as a Senior Fellow with the Admissions department—a position I will be holding for the entirety of my last year at Dartmouth.
Dartmouth seems like a pretty small school. How do you meet new people?
A:
The first thing I realized is that Dartmouth is simultaneously intimate and yet big enough to meet new people everyday.
This is a hard reality to convey by description alone, but to answer, I think I should probably provide a little snippet into my own Dartmouth experience. For the first few weeks after my arrival on campus, I was meeting several new people everyday, and the first people I met during Orientation Week remain some of my closest friends. That being said, I spent a little over twenty weeks combined between my first fall and winter terms.
I was meeting someone new almost everyday, if not multiple people, but at the same time if I hadn't seen a few of my friends in a little while, I could walk around knowing I would see them eventually. If I hadn't seen my favorite floormates or my classmates from last term in a hot minute, I would eventually see them on the Green or in passing at the library almost consistently.
It's one of the cool Dartmouth quirks that you need not feel trapped by the same people and yet also have the benefit of seeing them on an organically regular basis. It's made for some fun chance meetings in the Novack line or in the Class of 1953 Commons (FoCo) light side (the best side, or where the windows give you your favorite flavor of Vitamin D for free while you're eating a made-to-order omelette).
That being said, meeting new people is extremely easy just by the virtue of Dartmouth's community. You will meet so many people during the first few weeks of school because everyone will be exactly like you: we all want to make friends and the college spirit makes it easy. Afterwards, though, your friends will always be introducing you to new people, and even without trying too hard, you'll be meeting new people all the time. Going to a club meeting or participating in an intramural sport will instantly make you several new friends, and it never stops, because Dartmouth is big enough that you'll almost never know your entire class.
I hope this helps you realize that socializing at Dartmouth is somewhere of a perfect balance — you'll never really feel trapped and you'll never stop meeting new, incredible people.
Some of my rising senior friends from New York have been in contact with me since graduation, and I've compiled a list of FAQs that might help you better understand life at Dartmouth!
From orientation week to your classes, you can easily find community at Dartmouth! Read on to know how I met my Dartmouth family and where you might also find yours.
