The D-Plan

Hey everybody,

This blog is of course all about life at Dartmouth, and I just realized that it's almost impossible to talk about Dartmouth much without first explaining something that makes it truly unique from most other schools in the country: the Dartmouth Plan. The Dartmouth Plan (or D-Plan, as everyone here calls it) is basically our academic schedule (though it's also used to denote individuals' schedules, as in "What's your D-Plan?") As it has a huge impact on students' lives, I want to give you all a brief rundown about what it's all about.

Unlike most schools, Dartmouth does not operate on a semester schedule. Rather, we use a quarter system of 4 ten-week terms per year that correspond roughly to the seasons (so there are fall, winter, spring, and summer terms). Each term, students usually take 3 classes. So while for each class we're doing 14-15 week's worth of work in just 10, we take only 3 classes as opposed to 4 or 5, so I think it balances out pretty well. At least it's easier to compartmentalize our courses, even if the terms are more intense than they'd be at a semester school.

The fun comes in when students plan their schedules. Here's how it works:

• 4 terms per year for 4 years is 16 terms.
  
• We don't really count senior summer because most students have graduated and moved on by then, so there are really 15 terms.
  
• Of those 15, students have to be taking classes either at Dartmouth, on a Dartmouth study abroad program, or though an exchange with another school for 12 terms.
  
• Of these 12, Dartmouth requires that students are on campus for 7 specific terms. In the diagram below, these terms are shaded in green. They are freshman fall, winter, and spring; the summer between the sophomore and junior year (sophomore summer); and senior fall, winter, and spring.
• How students do their last 5 terms (12 - 7 = 5) is pretty much completely up to them. Most students go on a foreign study program at least once, and we can do up to three. I'm going to write more about study abroad programs in my next post.
  

To illustrate this a little better, I'm going to show you my D-Plan and explain what I've done for the past three years here at Dartmouth. On the graph, "R" stands for residence term, as in on-campus at Dartmouth taking classes. "L's" are leave terms, and "O's" stand for off-campus programs. *You can also try setting up your own D-Plan and seeing how the whole thing works by clicking HERE.*

As you can see, I was on campus for freshman fall, winter, and spring, and took a leave term in the summer. Most first-year students follow the same plan, though some stay on in the summer and take classes or go on a foreign study program (the Russian and Arabic programs, for example, take place in the summer so there are a number of freshmen who take levels 1, 2, and 3 of those languages and then go on the off-campus program. As for me, that's the summer I biked across the country with Bike and Build, raising money and awareness for affordable housing. I came back to campus for my sophomore fall, and then went on the French LSA+ (Language Study Abroad+) program in Toulouse, France. I'll write about my experience there in my next entry. After Toulouse I came back to Dartmouth and did 4 on-campus terms in a row, including Sophomore Summer.

A lot of you may be thinking, "Really? School in the summer!?" Certainly a lot of my friends from home wondered why I "had" to do "summer school." As it turns out, Sophomore Summer is typically one of Dartmouth students' favorite terms. First of all, it's great because just about the entire sophomore class is on campus as the same time. Because people are always coming and going throughout their sophomore and junior years, Sophomore Summer is the only term in two years when one's entire class is on campus. The weather in Hanover is the best during the summer and it's a really great time to get out and explore the Upper Valley. And because the upperclassmen are away, sophomores get to take leadership positions in their clubs and organizations. I got really into kayaking during my sophomore summer last year, and it's something that I've kept doing since (when the river isn't frozen, that is.)

Finally, after a year and a half straight of classes (including my term in France,) I took this past spring off. I went home and took an internship at a local manufacturing facility, doing some marketing support and consulting for them. It was really nice to have a 8:00-4:30 kind of routine and get to see the parents for more than a week at a time. But I couldn't stay away from Hanover for long; I'm back up this summer working full-time for the Admissions Office.

There are a lot of advantages to the D-Plan. One is that it allows students to take leave terms in seasons other than the summer. When Dartmouth students apply for jobs or internships in the fall, winter, or spring, they're competing against a much smaller applicant pool than they would have if they'd applied for the summer, when just about every college student in the world is out of class and looking for internships. Dartmouth is actually known for having students available to intern throughout the year and they're actively sought after in both the government and the business world.

There are lots of other advantages as well, but I feel like this post is getting a little long so I'm going to cut myself off here. But if you have any questions, please ask in the comment section and I'll be happy to answer them.

It's the Little Things

Madhavi (another intern) and I got asked a great question in our student forum this morning: "What has been your best moment at Dartmouth?" Of course, there are really so many that it's impossible to say which is the absolute best, but I picked one of my favorites, and I just thought I'd take a minute to relate it to you all.

There's a pub on campus called Lone Pine Tavern. It's in the basement of Collis, our student center, and it's the only dining place on campus that serves beer (they definitely card), but it's also a really fun place for the under-21 crowd to hang out at. They've got really great shakes and bar food - the quesadillas are my favorite - and tons of board games, word games, and a poker set. There's also a performing space with a piano and a sound setup, so usually at some point there's a performance, whether it be karaoke (every Thursday night this summer, I believe), open-mic stand-up comedy, or, most often, a student solo act or maybe a small group of performers (guitar/voice, piano, keyboard kind of thing).

So back to my favorite moment. It was nearing the end of sophomore summer, and a lot of people on campus were feeling an urgency about spending time with their closest friends before the term was over. I hadn't seen my friends Ray and Sarah in a while, and we decided to get together to catch up with each other.

We go to Lone Pine and got some shakes and snacks, and then walk down to Dartmouth's golf course for a midnight picnic under the stars. The night skies here are absolutely breathtaking. I come from a rural area where there aren't a whole lot of lights around anyway, but the sky this night at the golf course is particularly remarkable. I throw down a blanket I brought and we sit down and start sharing stories from the past year. I tell them about some of my experiences in France on the Language Study Abroad+ Program, and Sarah and I reminisce a little about our previous summer's experience on Bike and Build. So anyway, we're hanging out having a pretty good time when pretty far away on the golf course we hear a sprinkler come on. "Uh-oh guys," I say. Ray says not to worry about it; we're pretty far away from the sprinkler. But then another one comes on, a little bit closer. I look around and in the moonlight can see that we've got our stuff spread out all over the place. "Guys, I think we should move." They're still not that concerned. Another sprinkler, closer. Another. "Alright, time to go!" We throw everything we have - shake cups, quesadilla containers, the blanket, our cameras - into our bags and start running, just as a sprinkler buried no more than 10 feet away comes to life, managing to spray us just once as we make our escape.

When people ask about things to do at Dartmouth, I usually don't mention events like the one above. Prospective students usually don't want to hear that hanging out at the golf course at night is one of the big things to do on campus. But when you get here, you start to realize that having fun isn't about the things you're doing, but about the people you're doing those things with. And Dartmouth has got some of the best people there are. Who wants to spend a night in the city with a bunch of random people? Not me. A midnight picnic on the golf course and a run-in with the hydration system with two of my closest friends? Anytime. Unless it's the winter.

I scream, you scream...

One of the things I love most about Dartmouth is the great cycling that's available around here. After doing Bike and Build my freshman summer, I've been absolutely addicted to road biking, and New Hampshire and Vermont offer no shortage of great roads to bike on. So when Colleen, one of the admissions officers, asked me and Mats (another AO) if we wanted to bike up to Fairlee, VT after work yesterday to get some ice cream at a place called Utter Delight, of course I jumped at the offer. Plus, I'd just gotten my bike back from a three-week stay at the bike repair shop, so I was really itching to hit the pavement again.

We left Hanover at about 5:15 for the ~20 mile trek up to Fairlee. The ride up was incredibly beautiful. We took River Road, and with cornfields on our right, the Connecticut River to the left, and rolling hills ahead, we enjoyed some really great New Hampshire scenery. We even passed through a covered bridge!

In what seemed like no time at all, we crossed the river and arrived at Utter Delight. I think it took longer to decide what kind of ice cream I wanted than it took to eat it, but I finally decided on one scoop each of Moosetracks and Peaches and Cream in a cone. There's really nothing like ice cream after a bike ride on a warm (hot) summer afternoon. We hung out in the shade for a while before heading back to campus via Route 5, on the VT side of the Connecticut.

Biking with other people is a lot more fun than biking alone, and on the less-traveled roads of Northern New England, you can really have a pretty good conversation. I can't say I remember what we talked about, but it made the time go by really quickly, and we were back in Hanover before I knew it. Colleen thought it would be a great idea to jump into the river before heading back up the hill to campus, and after a moment's hesitation, Mats and I agreed. We walked down to the swimming dock and jumped into the just-warm-enough water and swam around for long enough to cool down. It was definitely the perfect way to cap off a great afternoon.

Mats and I made plans to do a century (a 100 mile ride) on Sunday, but I'm not sure if I'm in bike-shape enough to pull it off, and after this week's prospective student fly-in program ends on Saturday, I might be too exhausted to do anything at all. But I think we'll go for it anyway and I'll just hope for the best!

Majors at Dartmouth

One of the things I do for the Admissions Office is answer emails, and I'm really surprised at how many students think they need to apply for a particular major or academic program at the same time that they apply to Dartmouth. It's not their fault for thinking this - a lot of universities require students to apply not just to the university but also to a specific college for admission. I just can't imagine going to a school where I'd have to decide on my major so early on in my college career and, once I've done that, actually apply for it and have a chance I could be rejected!

At Dartmouth, students don't have to declare their major until the middle or end of their sophomore year. This gives them ample opportunity to explore all the different academic departments that the college has to offer. Of course, some students know what they want to do right when they get here and follow that path all the way through to graduation. Many more think they know what they want to study, but after some time here find that they enjoy something else much more. As for me, I came to Dartmouth thinking that maybe I wanted to major in engineering, but I also knew that I had an affinity for the humanities. After my freshman fall, during which I took a calculus class (and found out I really didn't like it) and an introductory environmental studies class (and discovered I loved it), I knew I wasn't going to study engineering. I bounced some ideas around with my parents, friends, and first-year academic advisers, and considered environmental studies, sociology, and English, before finally settling on government (with a concentration in international relations). Since then I've added the environmental studies minor, mostly because I've taken so many ENVS courses as electives that I only needed one more to complete the minor.

Once students declare a major, they still have the option of changing or modifying it. And because we operate like a college (and not a multi-college university), changing one's major doesn't require the student to move to or take classes in an entirely different section of campus. After all, our campus isn't that big! But my main point is that here, we don't have "Engineering Students" or "Humanities Students" or "Economics Students." We only have "Dartmouth Students." And that's one of my favorite things about this place.

Dinner at Foley House

Another one of the things we get asked about a lot in our Student Forums is housing at Dartmouth. Once again, it's one of those questions that's somewhat difficult to answer, because 'housing' is really about more than simply what kind of room you live in. The short answer is that the rooms here are great, and there's a lot of variety in the types of residence halls, so there's really something for everyone. But while that's definitely a fair and honest description of housing here, it doesn't really capture the essence of what we mean by "variety." For instance, some of Dartmouth's greatest places to live are in what we call "Affinity Houses," or buildings with special themes that students may apply specifically to live in. They're kind of the undiscovered gems of on-campus housing, and so I just want to take a minute to tell you about one of them.

Last night I was invited to dinner at Foley House by my friend Delia. We've been friends since working on the same Undergraduate Adviser Cluster Staff last year, and she wanted me to come over since yesterday was her night to cook. Foley House residents cook for each other 5 nights a week, and it's really a great way to build a sense of community among the people that live there. Fortunately for me though, Foley is not a membership organization, so even though I don't live there I can still feel like I'm part of the community. This is especially great this summer because most of my '09 friends are off campus and it's great to have the opportunity to get to know some more '10's.

For dinner, Delia made grilled chicken and vegetable shish kabobs, scalloped potatoes, and a rice and bean dish she learned to make while volunteering in New Orleans last year. Let me tell you, if all Cajun food tastes that good, I might have to live in Louisiana for a while! We all sat out on the front porch eating and getting to know each other (well, that mostly just applied to me since most everybody there knew each other already). A lot of people were really interested to hear about what I do at Admissions since it's really a fascinating office. I have to say that Dartmouth students are the most passionate of any I've encountered about wanting prospective students to come to their school. That's what I feel so fortunate to work for Admissions, because I get to talk to "prospies" and their parents every day!

But back to dinner. It was really cool for me to get to meet so many chill people at once, and it was a great night to just hang out on a front porch. S'Mores (cooked on the grill, of course) for dessert were great (and insanely messy!) After a while it was time to clean up. I chipped in, of course, and honestly I was really surprised at how much fun doing dishes can be when you have 6 people in a kitchen all working together. We were done in almost no time and even managed not to break anything!

I hung out for a while before heading home, really glad for the experience. I'll definitely be heading back to Foley for dinner soon :)