As Dartmouth students return to campus after the College’s six-week winter break, some say they used the extended “winterim” period to take on internships, volunteer work, travel and athletic training that can be difficult to fit into the academic term.
Dartmouth’s winter break runs from Thanksgiving until after New Year’s, giving students roughly six weeks off campus. Students described using the time for professional development, College-sponsored programs, Outing Club trips and time with family and friends.
Ellie Barry ‘29 said she spent part of winterim working as a project assistant for Dartmouth’s Evergreen.AI, a college-specific wellness artificial intelligence being built at the College. “Over winterim, I did a short-term time task on revising structured dialogues,” Barry said. She said the work included a group Zoom meeting and one-on-one meetings with her supervisor to review progress.
Barry said she worked eight hours per week for two weeks during the break and called the experience “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 said she volunteered through the Dartmouth Center for Social Impact’s ImpACT Winterim Leadership Intensive, a three-week program that connects students with volunteer opportunities either in the Upper Valley or in their home communities.
Sheikh said she worked with Will’s Place in Skokie, Ill., which she described as “a cafe that provides jobs to adults with disabilities.” “My job there was just helping man the register, helping with retail and things of that nature,” she said.
Sheikh said she was “grateful” to be part of what she called a “tight-knit community” at the nonprofit. “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.”
Students also used winterim for outdoor travel through the Dartmouth Outing Club. Emily Anderson ‘28 said she led a Club Nordic Ski trip to Anchorage, Alaska. “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 group participated in traditions that helped members bond. “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 during winter break through organizations including the Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and the Irving Institute for Energy and Society. Sally Young ‘26 said she traveled to Washington, D.C., as part of the Rockefeller Leadership Fellows program.
“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, adding that her group is doing an education policy project. She said the group met with alumni knowledgeable about that area.
Young said meeting alumni was the “most memorable” part of the trip because participants received “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 some students traveled away from campus, several varsity athletes returned to Hanover for training during portions of winter break. 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. She said the team also traveled to Colby College and Bowdoin College for weekend matches.
Liu said being on campus during break offered time with teammates outside of practices and competitions. “We would get a team lunch at [the Class of 1953 Commons] and it’s literally just us in the cafeteria,” Liu said. She also said she attended a training trip to Florida with the team before heading back to Shanghai for Christmas.
Students also described winterim as a chance to spend time with family and friends. Anderson said she “saw all [her] friends” and “checked in with people,” while Sheikh said she traveled to New York for 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.”
As the winter term begins, students said winterim provided time to pursue experiences ranging from short-term professional work and service programs to College trips and team training, as well as time at home before returning to classes.
