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!
For those of you who may not be entirely familiar with the concept of Sophomore Summer at Dartmouth (I didn't understand it until my second term as a student here, so don't worry), Sophomore Summer is essentially when Sophomores at Dartmouth come together and take an extra term of classes the summer before their Junior year. At a typical college/university, this wouldn't be the norm at all, but it's both typical and possible at Dartmouth because of the way the college is academically organized year-round through a quarter system. If you're curious, I go into more of the nuances of what the quarter system is really about in one of my Q&A posts here:what-i-wish-i-knew-about-dartmouth, but the main takeaway I would say is that the system operates year-round and with immense flexibility built into it, which is why Sophomore Summer in particular functions so well.
Sophomore Summer is special to Dartmouth students in various ways—the big one, in my opinion, is that it's a marking agent for officially being halfway through your time here as an undergrad. Personally, I wouldn't say I like thinking about that; Dartmouth has become my home away from home, and attempting to grapple with the fact that graduation is five terms away after Sophomore Summer is an interesting feeling.
Nonetheless, besides that feeling, Sophomore Summer has been amazing for me. One thing that I didn't realize would be so key in my earnest feelings toward Sophomore Summer is the idea of becoming solidified as a true Dartmouth student once again. It was one thing to shake hands with President Hanlon at my first-year Matriculation Ceremony or to walk around the great bonfire during my first homecoming, these Dartmouth traditions gave me a profound sense of belonging, but in my opinion, they don't compare to Sophomore Summer in the slightest (and I'm only two weeks in).
I'm definitely still experiencing this profound sense of belonging through Sophomore Summer, but it's a very different experience of belonging—it feels way more empowering. I would say this is largely due to the fact that it really is only my fellow '26 peers and me on campus this time around. Although we've been here for two whole years now, It feels like we're all finally navigating this place on our own somehow.
To give some extra context as to how I'm feeling, in all senses, Dartmouth is extremely compact and collaborative. The student body here is undeniably cohesive across all years, and the lines between first-year students and upper-level students are incredibly blurred. So, when all of my peers and I are thrown into a new term, in an abnormal season to take classes in, and without the beloved upper-level students who've been guiding us all along for a good chunk of time now, it's jarring, but like I said, also very empowering.
We're making our own memories, and strictly collaborating with each other. It's hard to truthfully describe the feeling, but I'm really starting to understand why this summer is labeled as a sort of coveted rite of passage by all who've experienced it.
This is a picture from one of my evening rides the other day—I stopped to snap a pic as I thought the manicured grass with the Dartmouth Church of Christ steeple in the background looked great with my bike.
Another thing I'm loving so far is taking classes in the actual physical setting of summer in Hanover, NH. Although my feelings for 10 weeks of college summer school were relatively ambivalent at first, the outdoor scene here at Dartmouth in the summertime has nearly counteracted all my mixed feelings. I've been riding my bike in the sun, I've been taking extra Woccoms (walks around Occom Pond), I've been to the local mini golf course with friends and I've been spending a lot of time in my fraternity getting to know my '26 classmates better.
It was raining during our mini-golf trip, but I'm actually a huge fan of light rain so I had even more fun.
Overall it's shaping up to be a phenomenal term, I'm truly stoked to experience all that Sophomore Summer has to offer. Even more so, I'm excited to be writing about it and keeping you updated through the process :)
Curious as to what Greek Life is like at a college where 50% of eligible students are part of at least one Greek organization? Read on to learn about my experience with sorority recruitment!
