Hello there, friend! My name is Love and I am a '23. Aside from being on the pre-med track, I'm currently interested in studying math and public policy. I have a penchant for old things, learning languages, and the arts. I also love personality tests, irrespective of their actual validity—in case you're curious, I'm an INFJ, Scorpio, dragon, and type 2w1.
BIOL 11.07 (Major Events in the History of Life and the Human Genome) is a very unique class. We learn topics such as oxidative phosphorylation in conjunction with evolution and paleontology. In other words, where and when did ETC come from, and how can we support our hypothesis? Though not an easy class by far, every day the material I learn amazes me with the wonder of life, which is how biology should be!
MES 7.03 (Jerusalem: Vision and Reality) was my First-Year Seminar and such an interesting class to take! We explored Jerusalem through three main viewpoints (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). The class had a bit of religion, literature, anthropology, sociology, and even geography—all things I love to study but don't necessarily have the space for with our three-class quarters. I often found myself going to office hours just to talk with my professor about questions I had outside of the reading!
COSC 10 (Problem Solving with Object-Oriented Programming) is a data structures course and the last pre-requisite for the computer science major. Though I added it as a fourth class on a whim because of COVID-19 and remote learning, it quickly became my favorite class this term because I loved the problem solving that CS has to offer. It is a difficult class but the emotional and academic rewards make it all worth it!
This was one of four classes I took during fall term and it was super interesting! We learned about healthcare systems and innovations from around 4 guest lecturers per week, and were able to do research on our own and propose a new system at the end of the term. Students came from all over campus and the course was very enlightening for me in terms of understanding how care is dispensed in the U.S. and how we can improve it.
Though this was my first "foundation" course in the Biology department and I still found it challenging, I really enjoyed learning the material and found it all super exciting! We learned about DNA replication, mRNA transcription and protein translation, genetics, and had the opportunity to do a literature review at the end of the term.
The dreaded Organic Chemistry sequence of my pre-med track came upon me faster than I thought it would, but it surprised me by being one of my favorite classes to date! I found it intellectually interesting (even though it was time-consuming), probably because I treated it like a STEM-and-logic puzzle instead of pure STEM or pure memorization. Am I great at it? Not necessarily. Do I remember everything I've learned? I'm not too sure! Am I mentally ready for Organic Chemistry 2 next term? Not at all! But I had a lot of fun doing this class and surprised even myself with how I tackled it.
I love dancing, story-telling, and learning about different cultures so I knew going into this course that I would enjoy it. Cross-listed in the theater and AAAS departments, this course let students have the privilege of working with Dance Theatre of Harlem members who were in Hanover for a summer residency. As a group, we analyzed a play ("The Purple Flower" by Marita Bonner) and transformed the text into a physical movement piece. Each student also had complete ownership of a personal final project, and I opted to do a self-choreographed dance. Overall, I loved getting the chance to work creatively in my academics this term and I also was able to broaden my perspective and knowledge of the African-American story in the process!
As a pre-med, I am constantly trying to learn more about the U.S medical system. This course was extremely engaging in all aspects, taking students through all of American history through the lens of healthcare within the span of 10 weeks. I particularly liked having a discussion session that replaced a lecture, since we were able to talk about the issues with the professor and think out loud about our readings. The course was definitely challenging and required a lot of synthesis across different time periods and topics, but I feel like I came out of it with a deeper and more profound understanding of our healthcare system and why it functions the way it does today.
WinterDetroit, MI
For my junior winter, I did an internship in clinical research! With COVID affecting so much of my college experience, this practical, in-person work internship was very important for me to not only hone my employable skills but also see what having a 8am - 5pm job looks like and how it could fit into my future.
Much like my other pre-med courses here at Dartmouth, Biochemistry was quite rigorous and fast-paced. It was certainly challenging, but I found the work extremely rewarding and I enjoyed learning about all the different mechanisms that happen inside of our bodies. Additionally, many of my friends were also in this class as well, rounding out final prerequisites for graduate school, and this fact made it all the more fun.
SummerDresden, Germany
For my junior summer, I had a research internship in Eastern Germany, working at the intersection between math, computer science, and biology! The learning curve was very steep since my project focus changed once I arrived in Europe, but I had a lot of fun and learned a lot about the content and myself. I am extremely thankful for all the support that Dartmouth has given me throughout my time here, without which I wouldn't have been able to do a 12-week European adventure!
As a pre-med student interested in health disparities, SOCY 75 was an amazing class to take! We covered numerous topics concerning how where one lives can impact their health outcomes. At the end of the course, students were also able to complete a final project of their choosing and I loved being able to tie my personal experiences into an academic course.
Throughout college, most of my science courses have been at the introductory level: one term of genetics, one term of cell structure, etc. Rarely have I had the chance to engage with something on a deeper level or connect the pre-med courses to human biology. This course was super interesting because I could finally connect everything I've learned throughout college into one cohesive course that connects to something I want to do post-Dartmouth.
My computer science experience before coming to Dartmouth was very little: I had taken one class before during junior year of high school and just thought that that was the end of it. I wasn't planning on taking any COSC courses once I got to college, but with coronavirus happening my freshman spring term and all grading being moved to P/F, I decided to give it a go!
Since I had placed out of COSC 1 with AP credit, I went straight into COSC 10, which is basically data structures but is named Problem-Solving with Object-Oriented Programming. Most students take either COSC 1 or COSC 10 their freshman year if they are planning to be a computer science major, but there are all years in both courses since programming can be a really valuable skill to have. Unless you know you absolutely can't code, I would recommend you to try it out during your first year. Coding is super rewarding, develops other skills such as logic and even stylization, and can open up students to a world that many have never even seen before. I still remember the first time I completed a difficult project and it felt like I could conquer the world! Especially as a girl who has always identified as a "humanities" person, I can definitely feel for you readers who think that STEM or computer science is just not your forte. I think you should still consider it, and at the very least, you'll come out of it as a stronger and more determined than you ever thought possible. A fellow '22 blogger named Catherine has a great post on why everyone should take CS 1.
My own foray into CS has been relatively smooth. COSC 10 itself is the last prerequisite/"non-major" class you can take in the department before it gets really specialized and people will wonder why a non-CS major or minor is taking the class. Because of P/F this term, the class is absolutely huge and lots of people are trying it out. We have lecture three times a week and recitation once a week, which is basically an hour set aside where you meet with your assigned TA and do short, in-person coding to make sure that you're keeping up with the material. Just a warning: COSC 1 teaches Python but COSC 10 presupposes Java knowledge, so the very first few weeks of the term can be very hard for students who never took AP Computer Science A.
I spend around 6-15 hours per problem set (depending on how much I paid attention during lecture that week), which I think is a reasonable number for a course, given that I don't do much work outside of class besides going to recitation (which never ends up taking the whole hour) and doing short assignments. In addition, COSC 10 doesn't just teach data structures but works on applying the material to real-life situations, such as designing a webcam paint program or coding your own Kevin Bacon game. It's very cool to be able to see how things that you use everyday (maybe like filters or social media friend networks) are actually just made up of code put into fancy UI/UX design. However, I also found this to make the course a little harder because I would need to understand both the algorithm/structure/principle while also learning about GUIs, webcams, etc. Sometimes I would get into a dead-end on my code and not be able to figure out whether it was my logic that went wrong, or maybe I just didn't understand this "application" enough to code around it.
Side story: that happened during my first problem set and I am still so worked up about it. We were working with buffered images and I had no idea what they were or how they worked. My entire class depended on me creating a buffered image that was black so I could backtrace with it while I was re-coloring another image, but since I didn't know what buffered images were or how to set them to black, I typed in BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB instead of BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_ARGB and my if-statement never returned a true boolean so the rest of my class never ran. Anyways...
Overall though, I still really like the course. In fact, it is my favorite course this term, which is super surprising considering I added it as a fourth class last minute. I always want to do my homework and find my work in this class to be the hardest to put down. Programming as a whole takes up a ton of time, though, so I would advise caution for people who have a heavy workload or lots of extracurricular activities. If I were on-campus, I don't think I would have made the time to take this class. But I'm very glad I did! Tons of my friends are in the class, which is fun, and I enjoy doing recitation with my TA, who makes everything very easy to understand and is so patient with us when we obviously know nothing. If you're an incoming freshman and are on the fence about taking CS, I highly suggest that you do it! You never know what might happen.
Dartmouth changed my life. A large part of that change comes from the support I have received from professors. Learn more here about some mentor-mentee relationships I have made!
