I'm Kalina, a '27 from Sofia, Bulgaria. I love books (I love reading and writing them), and I particularly love fantasy (i.e., I'm an expert on Middle Earth and Hogwarts studies). I'm fascinated by the human brain and the real-world magic of science. I also love hiking, bird-watching, climbing, and em dashes.
This week the Flora and Fauna (FnF) club (a sub club of the Dartmouth Outing Club, DOC) organized a charming indoors trip to the Book Art Center in the basement of Baker Library.
You might think that it's difficult for a club like Flora and Fauna to stay active during winter. After all, all the flora, fauna and fungi are hiding from the snow, aren't they? Well... this is not completely true. Flora and Fauna leaders can take trippees (students who sign up for DOC trips) on snow tracks ID trips and tree ID trips–but we have indeed found each other doing a lot of indoor trips.
My friend Duda leads a trip to the Rauner Library every Thursday, where she and her trippees turn the page of a really big and really expensive bird book and to see what this week's bird is. Farrar, another FnF leader whom you can see below, on the other hand, organized another indoors trip. They took us to the Book Arts Center, where we printed a very special Flora and Fauna poster designed by no other than Farrar. (Farrar has even taken classes on book printing!)
Flora And Fauna & Fungi & Fun Rocks and Friends, designed by Farrar, ready for printing.
Farrar printing the first poster!
The Book Arts Center is a really fun place to go to if you want to decorate your room. You can come up with any quote or message in any font (and almost any language) that you want to, and then you can print in on a pristine sheet of paper and take it to your room to hang it on the wall.
I visited the Book Arts Center for the first time in the fall (you can read about my visit here). Back then, I learned how to set the type and prepare my little quote for printing. This week, Farrar had already prepared everything for us, so we only had to print the Flora and Fauna Poster. Only? What am I saying?! We didn't just print the legendary FnF poster–we also decorated it with many stamps.
Ready for decorating
Our trip to the Book Arts Center was a breath of fresh, inky-scented air (I love the smell of ink) in a week that began to smell more and more like finals.
In one of my previous posts, I mentioned how I joined a sorority earlier this fall by going through the recruitment process. I've come a long way since then. In fact, I am living in my sorority house for my sophomore summer!
Dartmouth is not just a college. With world-renowned graduate schools, why would we choose to call ourselves a college instead of a university? The story behind that decision dates back to a significant Supreme Court ruling.
On a quiet spring Saturday in Hanover, I traded the usual campus buzz for Monet in the morning and archery in the afternoon—a reminder that Dartmouth weekends can be just as meaningful when they're slow, reflective, and a little unexpected.
During my sophomore spring quarter, I took on the challenge of four STEM courses, and while it has been intense, the unexpected connections across subjects and the joy of learning have made it one of my most rewarding academic experiences yet.
Read about the Sophomore Summer Soiree and how I got to witness the beginning of something that hopefully grows into a long-standing Dartmouth tradition!
