Dartmouth word cloud!

I have this obsession with a website called Wordle. You essentially just type in words (or copy and paste them from the Dartmouth Admission website!) and it will create a word cloud. The more times you type a word when you're creating your Wordle, the larger it will be. Like I said, I'm obsessed. I used one for a presentation in my writing class Fall Term and everyone was impressed. If only they knew how easy it was.

The River

I have a love-hate relationship with my residence hall (aka dorm). On one hand, I have a lovely group of friends from my building. On the other, the building itself is old in a not-old-enough-to-be-quaint sort of way. I think it was built in the 1960s, which was generally not a very good decade for architecture. Its aesthetically qualities are only minimally bothersome though - it's really the combination of being far away and in an ugly building that make me resent my classmates in other residence halls sometimes.

Stand With Haiti

As I'm sure you know, Haiti was struck by a catastrophic earthquake last week. The lack of infrastructure and enormous level of poverty have made this disaster particularly devastating. As you may also know, Dartmouth President Jim Yong Kim is one of the founders of Partners In Health, an organization that has been working on health-related projects in Haiti for over 20 years.

Although the earthquake is tragic, it has been inspiring to see the way the Dartmouth community has mobilized help the Haitian people. There is one team of Dartmouth medical professionals already in Haiti and another is departing this week.

Student leaders have organized a group called Students at Dartmouth for Haiti Relief (SDHR). Normally I try not to post a list of links, but this is a special circumstance. I hope everyone will consider donating to Partners In Health, as this organization is one of the few working Haiti with the previously established resources to efficiently care for people.

Partners In Health: Stand With Haiti

Donate to Partners In Health

SDHR Facebook page

P.S. Here's a picture of me at the SDHR kick-off event (taken by my wonderful classmate and fellow blogger Brian Kim '13)! I'm on the left.

Random thoughts

• Are non-Dartmouth people as aware of the current crisis in Haiti following the earthquake? I think perhaps people here are more acutely aware because of President Kim's work in Haiti with Partners In Health. I feel for the Haitians and I'm praying for them.

• I like walking through the engineering school (which I have to do to get to main campus from my residence hall) and seeing frisbee people I know. They're all so friendly and hardworking. Note to future engineers: Thayer School of Engineering is a very cool building that I plan to explore with a floormate soon, but carved in several places is, "To prepare the most capable and faithful for the most responsible positions and the most difficult service." No pressure or anything.

• I really want to go on this trip I heard about recently. It's 10 days after the end of Spring Term. About 15 students go to Eastern Europe and visit concentration camps and historical sites and then restore a Jewish cemetery that has fallen into disrepair after being disassembled or misused by the Nazis during WWII. It sounds so powerful. I can't even express how much I want to go. Apparently about 60 people apply to go every year though, so it's a competitive application pool. Here's the website for Project Preservation!

• My Little Sister (through Big Brother Big Sister) came over today and we painted nails and made popcorn and played Go Fish. And ran around A LOT. As in up and down this five-story building many times. She's asthmatic though so we had to stop when she started wheezing a little bit. Next time she's going to bring her inhaler with her. We had a lot of fun though, and every time I see her she comes out of her shell a little more. Today she told me that her dad is in jail right now (I think this is a recent development), which makes me realize even more the disparities between the life of privilege most of us at Dartmouth are living and the lives of people in the surrounding communities. It makes all the mentoring programs (and there are a lot - BBBS, DREAM, etc.) at Dartmouth seem even more important.

• I'm going to lunch with my dean next week. Doesn't that seem cool? I think it's amazing that he goes to lunch with students. I have questions about study abroad and my D-Plan (aka my plan for when I'm going to be on-campus and such for the next three and a half years) so his invitation came at just the right time.

• My room is cold. I thought the heating was fixed but I think just the common room heating is working properly right now.
  

Wow I have a lot of random thoughts. I'm sure I'll have more to share soon. I have a lot of work to do but I've been procrastinating. I hate chemistry.

Strangers like me

I love that other Dartmouth students care about things like where they sit in class or at music events. I have Chem 5 (an intro chem class) at 10AM across campus and my friend a floor below me has decided we need to leave at 9:38 every morning to get there so we can sit near the friend. And it's great. In high school I was always the one hustling my friends out the door so we could sit right in the middle of the movie theater (embarrassingly enough, I went through a phase where I would count the rows and number of seats in each row and sit in the exact middle).

I'm sure there are people at Dartmouth who don't care about these types of things as much (i.e. those kids that come into every class 15 minutes late and plop in the back), but it's easier to find the conscientious ones here than it it was at home.

P.S. "Strangers Like Me" is a wonderful song from Tarzan. Check it out yo.

Off-campus programs

I know I said I would post things I don't like about Dartmouth but there's something else I want to do instead so I'll do that later. Applications for Foreign Study Programs and Language Study Abroad trips are due February 1 so I have to figure out if I want to do one next year and if so where I want to go. Here are ones that sound interesting to me:

• Anthropology/Linguistics FSP in Auckland, New Zealand
• Spanish LSA in Barcelona, Spain
• Geography FSP in Prague, Czech Republic
• Religion FSP in Edinburgh, UK
• Asian and Middle Eastern Studies/Women and Gender Studies FSP in Hyderabad, India

Ideally I would do an off-campus program during the winter so I could avoid the cold and such, but apparently they are very competitive. Upperclassmen have told me it's a good idea to apply to a lot that interest me to up my chances of getting one of them. Technically I'm exempt from the language requirement because of all the Latin I've taken, but I still want to take a spoken language at Dartmouth which is why the Spanish LSA appeals to me. But honestly that all sound good. I don't know how I'll choose!

If you'd like, you can peruse Dartmouth's off-campus programs yourself.

I ♥ the College

Since I've been home for break I've seen a lot of friends who are currently seniors in high school. They're all in the midst of the college application process and I am definitely happy I'm past that. At the time it seemed like everything was do or die, but now that I'm at Dartmouth I see that I was applying without that much knowledges of where would actually be the best fit for me.

I came into Dartmouth knowing what I had been told by the Admissions Office, which is solid information but doesn't tell about the little intricacies that make Dartmouth so wonderful. So here are five unexpected things that I love about Dartmouth, and later I will post three things I don't like as much, just to be fair and balanced.

Likes

1. Most people at Dartmouth are excited about awesome goofy things. If I want to dress up in flair (crazy clothes), I know I'll be able to find someone to join me. If I want to have an impromptu study break dance party in my room, someone will dance with me. If I want to randomly do cartwheels, someone will do them with me.

2. Most people at Dartmouth are excited about cool intellectual things, like debating and research opportunities and our new president Jim Yong Kim.

3. The campus is beautiful. Sometimes when I walk around I just get this overwhelming feeling of being lucky to be at Dartmouth.

4. Upperclassmen are excited to meet freshman. I went to a high school where upperclassmen disdained freshmen, but at Dartmouth we were welcomed enthusiastically. I got blitzes from upperclassmen during the first few months of school that said that they want freshmen to go to lunch with them and ask them questions and such. It was very nice.

5. There are great resources across the board. In my classes first quarter, my profs were accessible and gave us a variety of tools to help us study. Career Services is great and there are tons of service opportunities. My UGA (undergraduate advisor - equivalent to an RA at other schools) and my GA (graduate advisor - basically a UGA but she's a grad student and can help us with resumes and such) are great resources too.