Megan Batangan'18:
Megan Batangan ’18 grew up in Maui, Hawaii, and hopes to double major in government and Native American studies. Between the strength of these departments, the promise of experiencing all four seasons and the great time she had at the Native American Fly-In program, Batangan felt that Dartmouth “checked everything off the list.”
So far, Batangan’s biggest challenge has been the weather.
“I’m already cold and I’m already running out of sweaters, basically,” she said.
Despite the untimely chill in the air, Batangan has found a warm welcome all across campus.
“Where I come from, everyone’s kind of really, really nice, and they call it ‘the aloha spirit,’” Batangan said. “I thought coming here, people would be very preppy and very hardcore and cutthroat, and that hasn’t been the case at all. The students have been so nice, everybody’s been so welcoming and I can tell that I already love it here.”
Even so, some things about Dartmouth, like our prep-uniform, don’t quite make sense to her.
“I’ve never seen so many Sperrys in my life in one area,” she said. “Even the pastel pants. That’s not normal at all where I come from.”
Here at Dartmouth, she looks forward to getting to know a more multicultural group of people and hearing their perspectives.
In high school, Batangan was passionately involved in debate, especially surrounding issues that pertain to indigenous people. She has already joined Natives at Dartmouth and hopes to get involved with the Tucker Foundation to participate in community service on campus. In her spare time, she admits to being a huge movie buff and Netflix fan. She also loves to hike and stargaze.
Although she didn’t apply for special program housing, Batangan lives in East Wheelock this year.
“In the beginning, when I was assigned, I was kind of disappointed,” she said.
Batangan feared that living in East Wheelock would rob her of the typical freshman housing experience. She was pleasantly surprised to find that only a few of her floormates had applied for the program housing too, and they all get along well.
“Social life has been really, really fun,” she said. “I think the frat ban has allowed me to grow closer to the friends I’ve made here so far, my floormates and my roommate. We still have fun late at night. I know a lot of people are upset, but I’m good with it.”
Maya Moten '18:
When I asked Maya Simone Moten ’18 where she called home, her first instinct was to share her campus housing in the River cluster in Judge Hall. Originally from Somerset, New Jersey, Moten found herself drawn to Dartmouth for various reasons, even though the College wasn’t on her radar until the summer before senior year.
“Dartmouth was our last stop on the trip, and when I got here, it was like the combined things I liked from Northeastern, and the things I liked from Duke into one beautiful campus,” Moten said. “I really love the D-Plan, I love the idea that we’re actually on a college campus and I like all the people that I’ve met while I was here. Everyone was really friendly when I came to visit.”
Moten can even recall the exact moment when she decided Dartmouth was the place for her. She plans to study mechanical engineering and astronomy, and during her student tour, when she found out she could go on an engineering-specific tour of the Thayer School of Engineering that day, she knew it was fate.
When it comes to extracurricular involvement, Moten is seeking a change of scenery in college.
“While I was in high school, I was a very huge performing arts person,” she said. “That was literally my passion, drive and life.”
On top of participating in different ensembles, a women’s glee club and an a cappella group, Moten danced and acted. After spending a lifetime in the performing arts, Moten is ready to move on to something new.
Moten has already signed up to the Formula One Racing Team. She also hopes to try out for club sports, apply for the homecoming committee and join Programming Board and class council. The main goal, she explained, is to explore the things she didn’t get a chance to do in high school. And while a list like hers already had me hyperventilating and imagining more than a few all-nighters, Moten is wary about trying to do too much.
“When I over-commit myself, I always get worried about letting people down, or not being able to live up to everything, and not being able to give 100 percent of myself to every activity that I’m in,” she said. “But at the same time, it’s all part of the experimental phase.”
Read: she’s been here less than a month and has already calmly figured out what most of us take until senior spring to recognize.
Aside from expanding her extracurricular horizons, Moten said she’s also excited to meet different people. Four other students from her high school are ’18s, but as she pointed out, that’s only four people out of more than 1,000.
“Nobody knows who I really am,” she said. “I can kind of reinvent myself a little bit.”
Moten said she hasn’t faced any major challenges yet, but encountered two issues worth nothing — trying to remember everybody’s names and managing her time. Don’t worry, I (kindly) told her to get used to both of those — some things never change.
Given the competitive atmosphere of an Ivy League school, Moten said she has been caught by surprise by how collaborative and willing to help one another people are.
As far as the social scene goes, she’s not concerned about the “freshman freeze.”
“It’s forced us to have parties and not all of them have been the greatest, from what I hear — but it’s really no big deal,” she said. “It’s made no difference to me whether I’m going to a frat party or if I’m just hanging out in my dorm, because I’m still with people I enjoy, still having a good time and still not getting any sleep.”
Oliver Engelhart '18:
Meet Oliver Engelhart ’18. He was born and raised in Hong Kong, where he attended an international school. Well, that’s the short answer.
“I’d never consider myself an American although I’m half-American, half-British,” Engelhart said. “If someone asked me where I was from or what’s your nationality, I would actually respond by saying I’m from Hong Kong.”
Englehart, who speaks Mandarin and grew up in the cultures of China and Southeast Asia, said that the combination of his multicultural identity and his decision to attend college in America has placed him in a challenging position.
He said he finds “a huge divide and huge misunderstanding” between American and Chinese culture.
“Because of my upbringing, I can work and connect the two in a different way than most poeople have before,” he said.
Despite his American citizenship, Engelhart admits to having faced definite culture shock in his first few weeks on campus. The biggest difference, he said, is the drinking culture. Back in Hong Kong, where citizens can legally drink at 18, Engelhart lived in the bar district and even worked as a bartender. His early exposure to alcohol, he explained, gave him a more relaxed attitude toward social drinking.
“To me,” he said, “you can use alcohol to have fun, but you don’t need to get trollied to have a good time.”
Engelhart hasn’t found himself terribly impressed with the “shmobbing around” he’s observed. As a member of the varsity sailing team, he wouldn’t be drinking anyway because of preseason, he said. While others are dorm-hopping, Engelhart and his teammates are finding their way to the golf course to stargaze.
Although Engelhart chose Dartmouth in large part because of the sailing team, which is currently his most demanding time commitment, it is far from his only athletic pursuit. He considers rugby his second main sport, and about three years ago, he also took up ultra-marathon running and triathlons. So far, the apparent super-human has done two 100-kilometer races and does triathlons or biathlons most weekends.
When he’s not running more mileage in one day than I do in a year, Engelhart invests his time in social, humanitarian and environmental issues. Throughout high school, he worked to develop “Running to Stop the Traffic,” a 24-hour race to raise money and awareness to stop human trafficking. He also worked in conjunction with the Hong Kong Shark Foundation to stop the shark fin trade, which kills 100 million sharks annually just for their fins, which the Chinese use to make shark fin soup, he said.
Although he’s not sure what to pursue academically, Engelhart said he hopes to study some combination of international relations, government, biology, environmental studies and Mandarin, and he’s excited to continue meeting new people from different cultural backgrounds.
Lily Eisner '18:
For Philadelphia-born Lily Eisner ’18, applying to Dartmouth was a given. Eisner's older sister, whom she calls her “biggest role model,” graduated last June.
“When I was deciding on colleges, part of me wanted to be really different from her,” Eisner said. “But in the end I came here in the spring when I visited after getting in — people were just so inviting and excited to be learning, and that really inspired me to come.”
Eisner has lived in the same house her entire life, has known most of her friends since the age of five or six and has even gone to the same summer camp for 10 years.
The prospect of meeting new people and making friends is exciting and frightening at the same time, she said.
“I think I was definitely scared and having a rough time at the beginning of orientation week,” she said. “I didn’t think it’d be so hard to come to a new place and meet new people. But it’s harder than you think.”
Even with new faces, some parts of Eisner’s high school life will remain part of her time at Dartmouth.
Eisner played ultimate Frisbee throughout high school and captained the team her senior year, but has also taken dance classes since the age of 3 and has been involved in Best Buddies, a service club that partners students with community members or other students with special needs.
“I’m definitely planning on pursuing ultimate, just because it’s a great community and it’s an incredible sport,” Eisner said. “Also I had a really, really, really amazing experience on trips,” she said, and hopes to get involved with the Dartmouth Outing Club to take advantage of Dartmouth’s access to the outdoors.
When it comes to the social scene, Eisner expressed mixed feelings. On the one hand, she feels that the “freshman freeze” is a positive because it forces incoming students to make real friends and have people to watch out for them before ever going out. It is important, she explained, to know that people will worry about you if you are suddenly not around. That said, she has found the resulting social scene to resemble “two separate animals,” different between daytime and nighttime.
“In the daytime, I feel like everybody is super friendly and trying to meet everybody they can and going to programs,” she said. “So everyone’s been really nice, and then I feel like sometimes at night it gets a little bit, at least stressful for me, because everyone’s trying to find where to go.”
But Eisner maintains a hopeful outlook, especially after realizing that the dorm hopping is “just the louder part of the social scene,” she said.
Coming to Dartmouth, Eisner said her expectations were slightly skewed by her familiarity with the College and her sister’s experiences. Since arriving, though, she said she has found that the biggest stereotype that worried her, the drinking and the frat culture, was not as bad as she expected it to be.
“The truth is that there’s so many more interesting people here if you look for them,” she said. “Not that my stereotype has been proved wrong, because there definitely is that culture, but it’s just not as in your face as some people make it seem.”
