Hey everyone! I'm Cooper from Wayne, Pennsylvania, which is right outside of Philadelphia. I am a '28 here at Dartmouth, and plan on studying Quantitative Social Science and Cognitive Science. In my free time, I love getting food with friends, playing pickleball, watching sitcoms (personal favorite is Modern Family), and going on walks. I am super excited to be here and cannot wait to take you along my journey at Dartmouth!
Hello again! It's hard to believe but I have already completed the first ever week of classes. Let me give you a run down of a day-to-day review of what it was like!
Monday: Today, I had all three of my classes. First was my Philosophy of Time and Time Travel class, PHIL 01.08. Although it was mainly a syllabus day, I was already captivated by my Professor Binkoski's passion and the content that was to come! Next, I had my American Political System class, GOVT 003. Again, although we just got an overview of the course, I am ecstatic about the fact that I am taking this course during the 2024 election season, and cannot wait to see where Professor Mahoney takes us! And finally, I had my Introductory Linguistics class, LING 001. We spent some time talking about the class, of course, but also learned about the anatomy behind linguistics! Professor Pulju is simply incredible and I cannot wait for the rest of the quarter with him. The rest of the day consisted of hanging out with friends, some studying, and relaxing.
Tuesday: No classes today! I really just took the day to chill out and take some time to decompress. I had a few meetings here and there for clubs, but other than that it simply consisted of me getting food with friends and preparing for tomorrow's busy day!
One of my favorite study spots on campus: Novack Cafe!
Wednesday: All three classes yet again! Today, we dove into content for each. In my philosophy class, we learned what exactly an argument is, and analyzed some related to time travel. For American politics, we discussed our first chapter, which was just a general overview of American government and political identity. And for linguistics, we learned about consonant articulation (did you know that the letter "p" is actually called a voiceless bilabial stop?), which was super interesting and taught me something completely new! Wednesday is one of our "on nights" at Dartmouth, but I found myself simply hanging out with friends back in my dorm. Super chill end to a pretty busy day!
Thursday: All I had today was my linguistics class to prepare for the quiz we were having tomorrow. Besides that, I spent a lot of time in the library getting ahead for my classes. A very interesting reading that I had due for my philosophy class was a proof attempting to show that time is unreal, which I thought was incredibly intriguing (and also incredibly confusing).
Friday: And once again, you guessed it, all three of my classes! In philosophy, we debunked the proof, showing that the claim that time is unreal is actually incorrect. In American politics, we had a guest speaker, Christopher Clark, who spoke about the upcoming election through the lens of race. In linguistics, I had my first ever college exam and learned more about vowel articulation! To end off the busy day, we had Fallapalooza, where a band comes to play a concert for the student body! It was an incredible experience, and made the end of the week even better.
The Colony House performing at Fallapalooza!
I hope you enjoyed my thorough review of my first week of classes, talk to you soon!
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!
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.
On the Beijing LSA+, we have real-world Chinese practice every Friday. Last week we went to two neighborhoods, Houhai and Shichahai, and wrote a photo log about our experience. Read along to see what immersive language learning here looks like!
