Hey y'all, welcome to the woods! My name is Garrett Crouch, and I'm a '26 from Edmond, Oklahoma. Besides blogging, I'm involved in Greek Life and Dartmouth's Psychological and Brain Sciences Department. I enjoy reading sci-fi, listening to 90s rock, and playing video games in my free time. Other than that, I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to share a bit of my Dartmouth student experience with you—stay a while and enjoy!
For my first term at Dartmouth, I had a lot of fun exploring different courses/areas of study that piqued my interest—EARS 14 is a perfect example. This course in particular was very friendly to new students. I had a lot of fun analyzing the ways in which Earth's weather system works, everything from the tornado and climate labs to black lightning and supercooled ice. Professor Osterberg made the course extremely fascinating and personable! I'm extremely glad I took this course and recommend it to anyone interested in Earth Science.
I had zero programming experience prior to taking this course, and quite honestly, It was a split decision on my part. Nonetheless, I'm extremely glad I took COSC 1, and as a byproduct, I have a newfound love for computers. I came out of the course with a solid foundation in computer science principles as well as programming skills. More importantly, I made my own fully-functioning video game! ; )
I didn’t anticipate this course being all that different from Latin I, but it ended up being a nice surprise. A typical Latin course at Dartmouth involves small class sizes, group work, and the occasional lecture; however, within Latin II, we had opportunities to take a wide variety of field trips and learn more about the history of the Latin language as well as the many people that spoke it. I thoroughly enjoyed stepping outside the sphere of strictly language work (grammar, vocabulary, etc.) and learning more about the history of Latin in Latin II.
Psych 6 is by far my favorite course I've taken at Dartmouth—this course made me decide to pursue the neuroscience major. Whether it was walking out of the Moore Psychology Building with goosebumps down my spine having just seen a human brain in the flesh, or lying in bed rewatching lectures on the cellular mechanisms of long-term memory storage. This course genuinely made me feel like a kid discovering the world again for the first time, I loved it.
I loved this course—it was a fascinating mix of the neuroscience behind addiction as well as a deep dive into every class of drug. What particularly stood out about this course was the ability to connect my undergraduate research lab experience with the concepts I was learning (I'm currently involved in a neuroscience research lab studying psilocybin, the main psychoactive compound found in magic mushrooms, so it was fascinating to see the parallels there).
At first, I was worried Cognitive Psychology was going to be a slight rerun of some of the concepts covered in Psych 6: Introduction to Neuroscience, but this class was actually a pleasant surprise. We covered everything from how babies accurately learn their native language so quickly, to how we uniquely store complex, emotional memories as humans. We even covered a unit on everything psychologists know about the problem of consciousness, which was my personal favorite. There’s something alluring (and undeniably meta) about being conscious while learning about how we know nothing about consciousness—a recurring theme in the Brain Sciences!
Sometimes all it takes is one lecture. Lately, I've been thankful for Dartmouth's flexibility in personal discovery. And also neuroscience!
Thinking back a few years, even though I'm a Dartmouth student now, (I'm still wrapping my head around it), I wouldn't go as far as to say I was the ultimate high school student. I definitely had a good amount of academic curiosity embedded in me, but I never felt extremely motivated by one specific subject. Even just thinking back to freshman fall last year, I was generally clueless about what I wanted to study/a potential route for a specific major.
Now Let's fast-forward to the present day…
In my previous blog post, I talked a bit about my courseload this fall and how I've been particularly excited about taking one specific course—PSYC 6: Introduction to Neuroscience. I mentioned it was one of the courses I had anticipated taking at the start of my Dartmouth career, but ultimately never did as I spent most of my time exploring other interests. A year later, after a few failed attempts at finding my academic niche, I feel I might have found what I've been ultimately searching for in higher education. I don't want to seem overconfident and jump the gun, but I might just end up becoming a neuroscience major!
Remember in my previous blog post when I mentioned I was working on building my own small-scale human brain model out of Play-Doh (back-hanover)?
Well here are a few pictures of the following day in class after submitting that project:
It's one thing to visualize the human brain while attempting to bring back childhood skills and memories of manipulating that colored clay we all used to love; It's something entirely different to see a genuine, physical human brain up close and in person. It sounds cliche, but I don't think I've ever been more captivated by science in my entire life. The human brain is the most complex thing in the known universe, and there I was staring it down.
"How does the brain give rise to the mind? How and where are memories stored? What is the biological basis of consciousness?" These are just a few of the first questions listed on Dartmouth's online page for the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences: https://pbs.dartmouth.edu/undergraduate/neuroscience. And I get unnecessarily hyped every time I read them…
Like I said, I don't want to jump the gun on anything, but lately, I've been more than intrigued by the idea of potentially being able to spend my time studying the human brain. I'm extremely thankful for Dartmouth's personalized ability to explore and pursue a wide variety of academic interests; If it wasn't for the essentially open range of courses I've been allotted, I'm not sure I would've ever circled back to neuroscience. Nonetheless, I'm quite glad I did! ; )
Academics can be challenging at Dartmouth. But there are lots of groups across campus here to support you through your academic journey. Read on for my experience asking for help and a few organizations that might be helpful to you!
Every Dartmouth student is required to demonstrate proficiency in a language other than English. Here's my experience navigating the language requirement!
