Thursday, June 16, 2011

8 Hours, 480 Minutes, 28,800 Seconds!

Today was quite an interesting day. We had to wake up fairly early, and eat breakfast at Starbucks because of the long nature of the drive ahead of us. Our only destination today was Dartmouth University in Hanover, New Hampshire. Hanover is approximately a four hour drive from our hotel in Providence, so the journey there and back was a full work day of eight hours. The drive was pretty strenuous, and at one point or another all of my cohorts fell asleep except for me. On our way to Dartmouth approaching the two and a half hour mark when everyone was getting tired, a large turkey almost crashed into our large, fast moving Chevy Tahoe. This quickly got everyone’s attention for about five minutes of constant hysteria.

We arrived at Dartmouth and jumped right into the informational session. From this session I leaned that Dartmouth has a unique plan known as the “D plan.” This means that students have to take a required amount of courses, but they can modify these courses in order to fit into the major(s) of their choice. This was very unique because that means I would be able to take the classes I needed and wanted to relate to my major. Dartmouth’s campus is very beautiful, but also very secluded. It reminds me of Colgate University, a college that I visited last year. Both are strictly college towns in rural and secluded places, with an array of different types of people. We went on a campus tour and this was also very informative. Dartmouth has the largest study abroad program of any Ivy League college. You can choose from 42 programs, the second most of the Ivies is 12 programs. So this shows Dartmouth’s advancement in this arena.
After the tour we had lunch with Peter Chau, a Pinole Valley alum, Dartmouth alum, and the first “ILC” cohort EVER, and also John Beck, Dartmouth alum, and current Dartmouth admissions officer. Peter told us that when he was involved with the “ILC” it had no formal name, and on his visits to the East Coast he did not have the pleasure to travel with any fellow high school students, rather he only traveled with Mr. Ramsey and other School Board officials. It was great to see a former Pinole Valley student who was very successful. John Beck added great insight to what admissions officers are looking for in a complete student application.

After lunch we had an exclusive campus tour with John Beck and Peter Chau. In this tour we were able to see the original book of Mormon, and the famous Epic of American Civilization mural, painted by Jose Orozco. The mural used great color, shapes, and clashes. 

That basically concluded the day, but we did have to face the daunting and treacherous four hour drive back to Providence. Time went by fast though, because all of us in Brown Session 1 are closely knit and we know how to enjoy ourselves.

4 comments:

  1. Cute pictures!! A picture of the mural painted by Jose Orozco was posted by Erin. It's gorgeous.

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  2. I'm loving the naptime photos!

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  3. Andrew,

    When you all write about that wonderful 8 hour there and back drive, you all seem to be writing from the perspective of the people snoozing or kicking back. I want to hear from Ms. Larson--your chauffeur who had to do all of the work.

    Just curious about that "original" book of Mormon. Joseph Smith told the world that the original tablets (of gold) were reburied after he translated them from "reformed Egyptian" into English. In any case, even if what you saw was a first edition of his translated works, that had to be special.

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  4. Thank you Cynthia and Kelly. But yes Don, Ms. Larson had to be very tired, but I did not sleep in order to keep her company. And yes you pose a good point, most likely it was the translated edition, but yes it was special.

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