I remember when an admissions dude came to my high school and told us something along the lines of "Dartmouth students like to challenge themselves by voluntarily taking difficult high-level courses with low medians."
Wonderful I thought, Dartmouth is like MIT in the middle of the woods, filled with English majors that take orgo for fun and science majors taking seminars in European medieval history. With my fresh AP scores and TI-89 and in hand, I was going bananas with excitement.
When I finally got to Dartmouth, I realized the admissions guy lied.
At #102 on the website "Bros Like This" we have "Joke Classes: Sports classes, freshman classes and classes about woman." Which is kind of relevant to us, if you think about it. No matter how brilliant we were in high school, Dartmouth students (including me) are still, to some degree like any other college student ... we're slackers. Not slackers in the sense that we eat Billy Bobs, sleep through our 10A and neglect corporate recruiting (although we do these things too). I'm talking about "slackers" in the sense that, when given the opportunity, many of us love to take fun, chill courses.
These select courses, admittedly stacked with more "A"s than a Lil' Wayne rap, truly have a cult following (oh man that astro quiz was cray-cray). Here's a rundown of courses Dartmouth students will fight tooth and nail to get into, even if it mean watching a podcast in an overflow room:
1. Russian 13: Firebirds, witches, dragons and Rumpelstiltskin. I haven't taken this course myself, but I've heard it's essentially 10 weeks dedicated to everything you loved as a child. I'm talking, a solid hour of Candyland, robots and unicorns. Just imagine: A term of fantasy and never-ending dreams!
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Engines 1-10: Engineering for non-majors. These courses are basically the happy meal of the engineering department. Engineering normally requires high level math and science, but here its restricted to topics including time machines, solar powered cars and robots. I dare you to find one person who doesn't want to learn about robots. I'd also like to add that at one point the engines department offered a class about sailboats ... seriously.
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Music 51: You beat on drums and various musical instruments ... every class.
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English 42: This class perplexes me. Engines 36 is chemical engineering, and organic chemistry is listed as Chem 51. So English 42, American Fiction, should incite at least some degree of fear. Obviously that's not the case, since this class consistently reaches an enrollment of over 150 students. I guess its understandable, since the prof, D. Pease, has a YouTube video called "Damn It Feels Good To Be Don Pease."
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The Summer Triad: Classical Studies, Computer Science 4, Astro 3: A sophomore summer requirement ... just wait.
Okay, so I wouldn't describe these classes as "easy classes," because at Dartmouth no class is truly a complete joke some level of effort is always required, even if it is watching a podcast. I'll be the first to say that the quality of teaching in these courses is just as high as any major course, and one man's Multivariable Calculus is another man's Underwater Basketweaving 101.
So are Dartmouth students selling themselves short by not putting their nose to the grindstone 24/7? Nah, I think it's fair that we use these "chill" courses to balance out our already rigorous standard courses. Cyndi Lauper once said, "Girls just want to have fun." What's wrong with being those girls sometimes?
