Over winter break, students participated in a wide range of activities, from internships to trips with the Dartmouth Outing Club. Dartmouth’s winter break — also known as “winterim” — is unique compared to that of many other colleges. From Thanksgiving until after New Year’s, students are off-campus for approximately six weeks, providing them extended time to pursue opportunities.
Ellie Barry ’29 worked as a project assistant for Dartmouth’s Evergreen.AI over the break. Evergreen.AI, which is being built at Dartmouth, is the world’s first college-specific wellness artificial intelligence.
“Over winterim, I did a short-term time task on revising structured dialogues,” Barry said. “I had a group Zoom meeting as well as one-on-one meetings with my supervisor to go back over all the work that we’d done.”
Barry added that she worked eight hours per week for two weeks over the course of winter break, describing the experience as “impactful” to her academic journey.
“Dealing with AI [and] getting to understand a little bit more about how chatbots are created and developed definitely provided experience as an engineering major,” Barry said.
Nabiah Sheikh ’29 volunteered through the Dartmouth Center for Social Impact’s ImpACT winterim Leadership Intensive, a three-week program that connects students with volunteer opportunities in the Upper Valley or their home communities.
“The non-profit I was working with is called Will’s Place in Skokie, Ill., which is a cafe that provides jobs to adults with disabilities,” Sheikh said. “My job there was just helping man the register, helping with retail and things of that nature.”
Sheikh added that she was “grateful” to be part of a “tight-knit community” at the non-profit.
“I remember at the end of the program, one of the staff members made me a card, which was very sweet,” she said. “I honestly felt like those were the best three weeks of my life. ”
Emily Anderson ’28 led the Club Nordic Ski trip to Anchorage, Alaska under the Dartmouth Outing Club.
“This trip was a little difficult because snow conditions weren’t super ideal,” Anderson said. “We were trying to get out and ski on basically sheets of ice the whole time, but it was a ton of fun.”
Anderson said the trip included a “bunch of fun traditions” and that “everyone got to know each other well.”
“We always do paper plate awards on the last evening where everyone comes up with something about each person that [we] will give them a silly award for,” she said.
Dartmouth also sponsors academic immersion trips over winter break through organizations such as the Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and the Irving Institute for Energy and Society.
Sally Young ’26 traveled to Washington D.C. as part of the Rockefeller Leadership Fellows program, where she received professional advice from Dartmouth alums.
“The point of the D.C. trip was to meet with Dartmouth alumni that specialized in the policy area we’re working on,” Young said. “My group is doing an education policy project, so we met with a few alumni who knew a lot about that area.”
Young said meeting alumni was the “most memorable” part of the trip because they shared “genuinely great career advice.”
“I had a small group [meeting] with an alum who works at Education Forward D.C. and she was just overwhelmingly generous with her knowledge and her time,” Young said. “It was just really impactful seeing someone who was just so kind to Dartmouth students.”
While many students went on trips and traveled, several varsity athletes remained on campus for portions of winter break to train with teammates. Xiang Xiang Liu ’29, a member of the women’s squash team, said she “came back [to campus] during the end of November to start training.”
“We had a week of training where we just stayed on campus and trained every day,” Liu said. “That weekend, we also went to Colby and Bowdoin College for weekend matches.”
She also said she enjoyed “doing everything” with her teammates and spending time with them outside of practice.
“We would get a team lunch at [the Class of 1953 Commons] and it’s literally just us in the cafeteria,” Liu said.
Liu also attended a training trip to Florida with the team before heading back to Shanghai for Christmas.
In addition to pursuing professional and academic opportunities, many students also took time to rewind with family and friends. Anderson said she “saw all [her] friends” and “checked in with people,” while Sheikh traveled to New York to attend her cousin’s wedding.
“I just spent a lot of time with my family,” Sheikh said. “I went to the Chriskindlmarkt in Chicago, which is a German Christmas market and they have the best hot chocolate.”
