Welcome Home!

 Posted by Vanessa Trinh at 5:08 pm  No Responses »
Dec 062012
 

This post goes out to all the Dartmouth students that are now home for the holidays with this year’s new Academic Calendar extending from Thanksgiving to New Years as well as to the brand new ’17s that are, as of today, part of our Dartmouth family! Congratulations! I am excited to meet the DC- area ’17s at the Dartmouth Club of DC Holiday Party coming up next week.

As I finish up my time at home in DC this fall quarter, I have realized how crazy fast the time has gone by. After having this “real life” job, I am ready to go back and enjoy my time as a student for a little while longer. Although I have learned so much more in these past ten weeks than I could have imagined I would, I also miss my friends, my sorority and my classes that didn’t start until ten and were only a few steps outside my door. Get ready ’17s, for a fantastic college experience, whether you are in Hanover or taking off-terms in cities all over the world, take advantage of all of it! We’re all waiting to see what you’ll do.

Also, say ‘Hi!’ on campus!

 

 Tagged with: , , ,

Fall in DC

 Posted by Vanessa Trinh at 2:11 pm  No Responses »
Oct 112012
 

Well, unlike many of the other posts on here, my junior fall at Dartmouth is not actually at Dartmouth! I’m taking the Fall off, courtesy of the D-Plan, and working in Washington, DC. I’m interning at both the Department of State and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, for a total of at least 60 hours a week.

Overseas Private Investment Corporation

Overseas Private Investment Corporation

I’m a DC area native so I’m living at home with my parents and taking the metro every day to commute.

I know, I’m absolutely crazy. I go to State at 8 AM and leave at 4 PM for OPIC and work until at least 8 PM there! Thankfully, all of my friends are at school or the ones in DC are also working weekdays so I get to just come home and eat a home cooked meal before crashing into bed.

So far though, it’s been an awesome experience! Both of the internships are really interesting and I’m learning a lot every day. Most days I’m so busy doing work that I look up and its 7:30 already and I didn’t even notice. I know that if the jobs weren’t as interesting the 12 hour days would be dreadful so I’m thankful they are.

U.S. Department of State

U.S. Department of State

I’ve already been able to meet with the Ambassador of Panama, help with a North African entrepreneurship program, assist with multilateral agreements like the TPP and learn about development projects around the world.

The Assistant Secretary of the Bureau I work in is actually a Dartmouth grad and was really excited to have a Dartmouth intern, so it’s just another example of the Big Green network that extends across the world. It’s crazy that I get to take things I learned about in government and economics classes at school and actually see them in action here at State and OPIC, and it helps me realize how lucky I am to be a Dartmouth student and the opportunties off-terms give me. So far, it’s all been so rewarding!

 Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,

A Day in Sophomore Summer

 Posted by Delos Chang at 4:16 pm  No Responses »
Jul 262012
 

I’m sure you’ve heard it before but I’ll say it again: sophomore summer is flying. So many things happening all at once, it’s all so surreal.

First, I wake up to an invigorating all-marching band playing on the Green. I peek past my window curtains and see everything from a communal to a caterpillar-costumed puppeter. Ah yes, glorious Dartmouth life: people are celebrating HOPfest, a two-day festival of the Hopkin Center’s 50th anniversary. The grass on the lovely Dartmouth Green has never looked greener.

Because today I feel more alive than I’ve ever been. With all the ’14s on campus, the spirit of Dartmouth’s tight-knit community appears stronger to me than ever. On top of that, I love the Dartmouth classes I’m taking, in particular Econ 20: Econometrics. It is a class that so brilliantly deconstructs indeterminate systems into quantifiable ones (think economics and statistics marrying each other in a wonderful thought-provoking union). The great ambiance in the background doesn’t hurt, either.

What a great day — and it still hasn’t hit me that we’re already halfway through sophomore summer! Ready to go, I notice that this week is summer recruiting interviews week! Every summer, top firms come to Dartmouth to recruit students for the summer. And my spidey senses are tingling…

Today, I’m coordinating key developments in my startup, Memeja, which won $16,500 in seed funding from the Dartmouth Entrepreneurship competition. Key decisions today: my team and I are building rough prototypes to release to test the market and iterate upon. It’s interesting to witness first-hand just how much a Dartmouth education has helped me. Econ 26, the financial institutions and markets class (with awesome Professor Kohn), has prepared me to understand venture deals and capital markets more thoroughly. Social psychology taught me how to be a decisive team player. And astronomy, of course, reminds me how insignificant we all are in the grand scheme of things (a very humbling insight).

Ah, yes, sophomore summer, how I love thee. I’m trying my best to savor the experience moment-by-moment and remind myself just how lucky we all are to be on campus!

Guest Welcome: Christine Wohlforth

 Posted by DartmouthDirect at 1:46 am  No Responses »
Apr 142012
 

Christine Wohlforth is the Acting Director of the Dickey Center for International Understanding


Some of the best parts of the Dartmouth experience take place away from Dartmouth. Take Victoria B. ’11, who did an internship in Hanoi, Vietnam with an organization promoting sustainable development in Vietnam two summers ago. By her own admission, she was unprepared for the experience, and struggled to work with no Vietnamese language, living in a dorm with a bunch of westerners and commuting an hour each way to her job. Upon her return, she described the experience as “challenging, exhausting, rewarding, frustrating and scary”. But her internship, supported by the Dickey Center for International Understanding, also gave her the opportunity to try out real research, some of which she incorporated into her senior honors thesis. It also gave her the desire to return to Vietnam. Better prepared to embrace the culture she had only superficially encountered previously, Victoria just completed a Lombard Public Service fellowship working with Save the Children. She took Vietnamese, and practiced this skill interviewing street youth and families living with HIV/AIDS. Victoria is now preparing for a career in public service and advancing her study of Vietnamese. As she says, “Vietnam truly changed my life, and I am grateful for every minute I got to spend in that amazing country.”

Victoria B. '11 with some of the youths she worked with on her Lombard Fellowship in Hanoi.

 Tagged with: , , , , ,
© 2013 Dartmouth Direct Acceptable Use Policy