The Dartmouth Mirror 05/29/15

MIRROR 05.29.2015

Lessons in Geopoetry|2

Finding Unexpected Places|3

Question and Answer with Prior Editors|4-5

Leaving Time for Story time|6 Shuoqi Chen/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

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Lessons in Geopoetry

EDITORs’ NOTE

Column

The coming months herald great things for Mirror readers.

There is nothing more trite or infuriating than Editors’ Notes that skirt all discussion of pressing campus topics in favor of egomaniacal navel-gazing and self-effacing tangents that only barely disguise Mirror editors’ revolting self-obsession.

Charlie and Maddie, possessed by a curious desire to discuss themselves in the third-person, see any coverage of anyone other than Maddie or Charlie as kowtowing to reader’s whims. This magazine, the thinking runs, ought to be a vehicle for communicating every minute ripple in its editors’ psyche.

Lord knows Charlie, at least, will never kowtow.

(Maddie likes cows, she says.)

Summer Mirror editors, however, do have a tendency to kowtow — in other words, rather than be consumed by an invisible power dynamic with imaginary critics, sophomore editors are likely to respond appropriately to reader’s desires.

But not even these two who have summited egomountain could read this week’s Mirror without pause. Certainly, Charlie and Maddie had hoped that the spring’s final Mirror would celebrate Charlie and Maddie, but this week’s magazine, instead, celebrates the members of the Class of 2015 who served on the Dartmouth’s directorate. Their remarkably mature and thoughtful perspectives managed to shake even Maddie and Charlie out of their narcissistic slumbers, if only briefly.

Browse this Mirror for musings inspired by graduation, and have a great summer. You won’t miss us, but

follow @thedmirror

MIRROR R MIRROR EDITORS MADDIE BROWN CHARLIE RAFKIN EDITOR-IN-CHIEF KATIE McKAY

PUBLISHER JUSTIN LEVINE

EXECUTIVE EDITORS LUKE McCANN JESSICA AVITABILE

What should be on my Dartmouth bucket list?

B y Stephanie M C Feeters

Some 20,000 years ago, the Laurentide Ice Sheet began to melt, gradually thawing and retreating, inching up and up and up, at some point shaping the ver y valley we inhabit. I won’t purport to understand this process better than my B+ in “Marine Geology” suggests.

But walking down Gold Coast under a blushing sky, sun slipping west beyond Vermont, or running through Pine Park, or crossing Ledyard Bridge, I often think of this icy ebb and flow, wishing I could better read the glacial striations and grooves car ved into this land, better understand the soil on which I stand.

I’m lucky to be part of a landscape that prompts me to zoom out like this. A landscape laden with Abenaki histor y, mining booms and busts, destruction and rebirth. I relish these lessons in geopoetr y — some sudden, others taking the form of long, solitar y runs.

Last weekend, I hiked up Mount Kearsarge with a group from Aquinas House and Father Brendan Murphy said mass at the summit: all creation, all the possibilities of the planet, laid bare, wind muttering the “inexpressible groanings” of the Spirit. The night before, I stood by a fire at the Organic Farm and sang about Mother Earth in a foreign tongue, fingers sticky from s’mores. Earlier this term, a friend and I huddled atop a snowy Mount Cardigan, sure the gales would pick us right up and blow us away. In each of these moments I felt both insignificant and almighty, connected to something so vast.

Forgive the Kumbaya-ness. This whole nature thing is new to me. To be clear, my first word was “taxi.” I was pretty prissy as a child, honestly, and would squeal when I noticed something in the pantr y past its expiration date. I came to Dartmouth from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where our main activity was tooling around air-conditioned shopping malls. My DOC First-Year Trip, Hiking 1, began with a strenuous tour of Hanover. Then we trekked 1.7 miles to the Velvet Rocks shelter, cheap Chinatown frame-pack digging into my back. I was petrified. That was the most outdoorsy I’d ever been.

Since that first fall, I’ve spent a lot of time in Robo, reporting for and editing this paper. I’m not sure what happened, but I think maybe the fumes from the basement and first floor must have wafted up, slowly, subconsciously urging me to explore the wilderness because somehow or another, on a quest for one last P.E. credit, I ended up outside a cabin

How should I talk to my graduating ’15 crushes?

looking at a bucket of my frozen pee in the far reaches of northern Quebec, wondering what, exactly, Miss Manners would suggest I do. Flipping it over and tapping the base as if it were a ketchup bottle had accomplished nothing. So I found a stick and began whittling away, sprinkled icy chunks of urine onto the snow and returned the nighttime emergency pail to its place on the porch. I’ll be damned if it wasn’t graceful. And that was the civilized part of the journey, before we stuck skins on our skis and trudged up the frozen stream to set up camp atop eight or so feet of snow, before we har vested hundreds of spruce branches to make our tent floor, before we were enveloped by the forest.

So, city girl goes to Dartmouth, mellows out, starts to think maybe the trees have a thing or two to teach us. Is anyone surprised? That isn’t really my stor y, nor is it the point. Just so you understand, I was initially quite resistant to this project, balked at the narcissism and insularity of it — the newspaper’s seniors co-opting an issue to share tales of love and hurt and realization, lessons always better learned yourself. But I guess sometimes it’s just nice to hear that other people sur vived.

Maybe, eventually, even found ways to thrive. That, in part, was what I treasured about The Dartmouth: it gave me access to so many different nooks and crannies of this College, from campus celebrities to outspoken faculty to students who felt wronged. The work reminded me, day and in and day out, of my itsy-bitsy place in this narrative, of how lucky I was, how lucky I am, to be surrounded by such brilliance.

I’ve learned a lot here: things that shattered paradigms, things that made me want to shout, “did you know,” things that plummeted me into contemplation for days, ignoring texts, cancelling dinner plans simply to think. But the most important lesson is one I cannot share — that I was here to learn for myself. Not to get straight As, not to imitate intelligence en route to some perfect job, not to tick off boxes on the resume of an Educated Person. That I was here, plain and simple, to expand my understanding — that, and the fact I have so much further to go.

Dartmouth has shaped me in many ways, and I’ve relaxed myself into the mold, sometimes purposefully, sometimes unwittingly, but I’ve also resisted, thrust myself against the current. Some realizations I can pinpoint, others developed gradually. I’ve stopped subscribing to rigid hierarchies of intelligence. I no

How can I talk to my future ’19 crushes?

Do the Ledyard Challenge backwards — bridge first and In a lengthy flitz (500 words minimum), After gaining access to the ’19s’ then river. Read ever y book from you should explain why you are Facebook group, you should start the librar y (or at least check them interested in them. Do their eyes to vigorously comment on every all out). Flitz a professor. Pants Phil twinkle? Have you seen them doing post. A meet up in Cali? Count yourself Hanlon during graduation. Have a squats at the gym? Go into detail. in! Anyone from Nebraska? Comment “lost chance” party. Invite all past You should cc all of your crushes your favorite fun fact! Did you know — not only is this efficient, but hookups — any DMFO, boyfriend/ Nebraska means “duck-lover” in Finnish? girlfriend or random formal date — and it also shows your crushes that Oh, it doesn’t? Debate sparked and romance mingle in one location. It could get weird. they have competition and ignites as you banter away in the comments. need to reply fast!

longer believe in eating meat. Today, I stand pretty firmly opposed to the arbitrar y exclusivity of the Greek system and secret societies. But I admit there were moments I wavered, when this felt more like a symptom of being left out.

Yes, there are times I’ve felt wildly out of place here — times I’ve been deeply disappointed. But those are vastly outnumbered by the times I’ve felt loved and dazzled and inspired.

It’s easy to measure time in short spurts: 10-week quarters, days between midterms, minutes spent in the stir-fr y line. It’s natural, too, to seek greener pastures — browsing Buzzfeed in lecture, texting out to see if you picked the wrong basement. But we’re part of something so much greater, something that can’t be captured in kaleidoscopic iCals. Flipping through archives of The Dartmouth, the scale of our concerns emerges: photos of past Parkhurst protests, endless columns arguing for and against fraternities. It’s a cycle. We see but a slice, the way a tree blooms one particular May. Sometimes it’s worth zooming out, finding a new vantage point, looking to sources of strength buried deep in the bedrock.

I’m 22, I shouldn’t be offering advice.

But these are things I’d tell myself, were I starting all over again: Listen carefully.

Trust your perception. Indulge in your angst, the existential to the picayune.

Take time to sit and stare at the Connecticut River. Set your own standards, but make damn sure they’re higher than anyone else’s would be. Forgive yourself when you fall short. Know, and tr y to articulate, to whom and to where you belong, what you stand for. Say yes. Tr y again. And again.

We are all, always, constantly, becoming. Thrusting ourselves against ideas that seem incomprehensible, projects and papers that seem over whelming, hikes that seem insurmountable, relationships that seem impossible, making it out each time a little stronger, a little wiser: granite slowly forming in our bones. We’re in it together, this project we call Dartmouth. But we’re also each ver y much alone — let that invigorate you. The radiant heat from the Bonfire merging with leaves frozen into Occom Pond, with Orozco’s vibrant paints, with the 6 p.m. chiming of the Baker Tower bells, with the screech of metal patio furniture outside Collis, with trees rustling in the BEMA. Mist atop Moosilauke, slides of Constable’s cloud studies in Carpenter: each equally humbling.

Dartmouth as it was and will be.

Unexpected Places Column

B y Taylor Malmsheimer

Whenever I’m asked to discuss my favorite part of Dartmouth, I always end up talking about the friends and mentors that I’ve been lucky enough to meet. But when I sat down to write this column, I found myself thinking about places that have defined my time here.

I first recalled a moment during my initial visit to campus. My dad and I were listening to our tour guide, and I remember imagining myself lounging on the Green, FoCo cookie in hand, after a morning in the biology class that my tour guide described.

Four years later, I’ve spent many afternoons on the Green, embarked on a pre-med track that was derailed after a spring in Bio 11 and eaten my fair share of FoCo cookies. But those aren’t the places that came to mind as I wrote this column.

I first think of Robinson Hall, whose steps I hiked every day after class last year as an editor of this paper. In Robo, I learned to question norms, push people for the truth and think critically about the College. In Robo, I read stories that made me cry and others that made me laugh. It was there that I reconsidered ideas that I had once taken for granted. The hours I spent in Robo were my most difficult but also most rewarding hours at Dartmouth, and they taught me more about myself than any other experience.

I also think of countless mountain trails — Cardigan, Moose, Cube, Lafayette, Holt’s — where I spent hours alone with one or two or five other people. On those trails I realized that I don’t need an athletic pursuit to spark adrenaline or feel strong. Standing on a mountaintop at sunrise or in the snow can do that. I think of Europe, where two friends and I realized that if your train arrives 18 minutes early, it’s probably not your train, but you might luck out and end up getting to Venice in one hour instead of three.

I’m a compulsive planner, but a term in London is where I realized the value of spontaneity. In Europe, I ran frantically through the airport to catch a flight (barely), became lost in the streets of Verona with no ability to speak Italian and wandered the National Gallery of Art alone.

I also remember other places — the porch of North Mass, where three friends and I drank an entire gallon of orange juice on a sophomore sum-

mer night; Mink Brook, where only in the last month have I perfected my running route to end at the river; and the comforting smell of Raven House, where I’ve spent the past four years working for a professor.

Like many students, I’ve been asked my favorite place on campus, and always say Moosilauke Ravine Lodge (which I admit is a cop-out, since it’s not actually on campus). But I cannot think of Dartmouth without thinking of Moosilauke, since I’ve visited the Lodge every September of these past four years as a part of DOC First-Year Trips. I can track my journey through college with those visits — excited and nervous before freshman year, newly confident before sophomore year, nostalgically sad for the end of summer before junior year and feeling old but optimistic before senior year.

Lately, I’ve been thinking back to a sunrike I helped lead as a trip leader this past summer, when I fell into step alongside four ’18s and found myself answering their questions about classes, extracurriculars, social life and me. In those answers, I found myself always beginning with the setting — those places I described above.

I’ve read these columns every year since my editors in the Class of 2012 wrote theirs, but when it came time to write mine, I wasn’t sure if I would partake in the tradition, since no earthshattering advice came to mind. But in the past month, I’ve thought a lot about this same time four years ago, when I graduated high school as a three-sport varsity athlete, unsure of where I’d fit in without a team. My high school didn’t have a newspaper, I hadn’t gone hiking since I was in middle school and my only “abroad” experience was in Canada.

All of those places that are my Dartmouth — Robo, mountain tops, Raven House, London — they weren’t present in my imagined Dartmouth world during that first tour. It’s not that I didn’t think I would frequent these places — I simply hadn’t imagined them. So the best piece of advice I received four years ago was to leave some of high school me behind, and try things I had never encountered.

It was the unexpected places and serendipitous experiences that shaped me and introduced me to the people whom I describe as my favorite part of Dartmouth.

Eliza McDonough/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

For Taylor Malmsheimer ’15, unexpected places defined her time at the College.

Forgetting Your Past Column

B y Erin Landau

It is easy to lie about who you are, both to yourself and others. Most freshmen enter college with very few people who truly know them — and, of course, many barely know themselves.

This makes it easy to take on a new identity — many consider the ability to reinvent yourself to be one of the most positive aspects of entering this new stage in life. Unfortunately, this reinvention often comes at the cost of important aspects of one’s personality and can change the core of a person.

I am all for leaving certain things behind — letting go of the past and moving forward is a brave and difficult process that should not be overlooked.

But Dartmouth’s group-oriented culture can encourage students to be joiners rather than independent thinkers, and reinventing oneself to belong can inhibit personal development. Before embracing a community’s ideals without criticism, figure out what you value most and try not to lose yourself in reinvention.

There exists a certain trope at the College: A freshmen who was considered a nerd in high school might arrive on campus only to realize that she is now considerably more wellknown, even better liked — perhaps she could even be considered cool. It’s not because being book-smart is cool in college or even at Dartmouth — one of the few places you might expect this sort of role reversal. It is just that in a new place, you are capable of hiding a side of yourself because everyone doesn’t know the un-cool things you did in high school to get here — studying more than everyone else, playing the bassoon, never drinking, et cetera.

When I arrived, I thought of entering college as shedding a layer of skin — I would rise from the remains of my former self, glistening with the desire to embrace academics, frolic outdoors and join as many different organizations as possible to secure my place at the College on the Hill.

Often this prototypical student will join some sort of group to fit in — becoming “affiliated” with one of the College’s many organizations.

I myself have never been one to affiliate with anything. The groups I belong to on campus — including The Dartmouth — do not really form larger communities that also function as social networks. But many associate themselves with a larger community early on, and Dartmouth’s social culture encourages this sort of affiliation.

By affiliation, I mean groups, both exclusive and inclusive, that include the Greek system as well as other groups such as the Dartmouth Outing Club, Ledyard, DREAM, ski patrol, Dimensions of Dartmouth and an endless list of others. Social groups are not bad in and of themselves, and they often have commendable missions — the Greek system preaches sister — and brotherhood and ski patrol helps ensure public safety. Like any group, though, they foster the creation of a collective

identity that can be easily taken on by impressionable students. I don’t mean to argue against simply identifying as a member, but I find it troubling when people change fundamental parts of themselves to fit into the norm in these specific groups. Certain aspects of one’s personality might mesh well with the organizations’ values, making it easy to forget the parts that don’t really fit the template. Often personal reinvention coincides with the desire to join new groups, facilitating the prioritization of group values over individual ones. The result can produce confused young adults trapped in a social role that does not reflect their values.

I found it very easy to lie to others about who I was freshman year, mostly because I didn’t know myself well enough to understand that I was deceiving anyone. I made decisions that I considered rational at the time because I never stopped to think about how my actions would impact the rest of my time here. There were many times when I lied just for the sake of lying — I said I’d seen a movie that I haven’t actually heard of or I had been to a famous place when I was actually clueless. These lies are not always harmful, but they can add up — there have been points in a conversation during which I’ve realized that I accidentally constructed an alternative version of myself that doesn’t actually exist. I’ve tried to minimize those moments throughout college — when a lie spirals out of your control and all of a sudden even you believe that you love mountain biking when you have never ridden a bike in your life. Some of these lies originated in my internal desire to fit into a group, and some of them didn’t — some have been in an effort to hide parts of my past, and some have been in an attempt to reinvent myself completely.

We will always wish to hide the more unsavory parts of ourselves. I am not suggesting that reinvention is always problematic. It is easy to judge the nerd-turned-popular kid because reinvention is seen as a tool employed to gain social capital. But there are legitimate reasons to leave certain memories or behaviors behind when you get to college. Still, embracing the values of a group before understanding your own can make us forget the things we value most.

What happens when we leave these built-in communities behind? Do we find new identities to embrace, or are we left to face our true selves and confront all the aspects we wanted to change?

Try not to lie to yourself and others. Know thyself, the classical Greek aphorism, has never been more important than in college. You’re freed from parental supervision and yet are still developing mentally and physically. The importance of taking time to process what goes on around you, especially in the groups you join, cannot be overstated.

MIRROR //3

THE D RUNS THE

NUMBERS 216

The number of years since the founding of The Dartmouth

269 27,000

The number of acres in Dartmouth’s main campus and the number of acres in a tract of land owned by the College in northern New Hampshire, respectively

2003

The year that Keggy the Keg was created by the Jack-OLantern

$4.5 billion The amount of D a r t m o u t h ’s endowment reported in fiscal year 2014.

26

The number of members on the Board of Trustees

4// MIRROR

Polling our Editors We ask our former editors burning questions about their times at the College.

SPOTLIGHT

B y the 2015 Dartmouth Directorate

Caela Murphy — Arts editor What are you most nervous for in the real world?

CM: Staying in touch with friends who will be living in different states and cities after getting used to living five minutes away from them.

What would you tell your freshman year self?

CM: Say yes more often, and don’t judge anything until you’ve experienced it for yourself.

Also, don’t leave your phone on the first floor of a frat.

Least favorite KAF pastry?

CM: Almond cloud cookies.

Sasha Dudding — Managing editor What was the hardest story you had to cover while at The Dartmouth?

SD: A series on sexual assault for which survivors recounted their assaults and the aftermath — powerful, but very tough.

Favorite flavor at Morano Gelato?

SD: Sea salt chocolate How have you filled your time since leaving the paper?

SD: What time? It has a magical way of disappearing!

Aditi Kirtikar — Dartbeat editor Estimate the number of KAF coffees you’ve consumed.

AK: One thousand and eight. Twelve 10-week terms of a daily dose brings me to 840, plus an additional 168 cups for the 12 midterms and 12 finals weeks over the course of my four years.

Least favorite KAF pastry?

AK: Blueberry scones. I’m allergic. Yes, I know it’s absurd.

What has been your biggest personal change since you arrived here as a freshmen?

AK: The amount I use the word “egregious” has exponentially increased.

Eliza McDonough/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

Aditi Kirtikar ’15 estimates that she has drank more than 1,000 cups of coffee from King Arthur Flower.

What was your most terrifying moment at Dartmouth?

AK: I once unintentionally fell off the safety dock and into the Connecticut River at night in the middle of April. It was cold.

Lindsay Ellis — Editor-in-Chief What would you tell your freshman-year self?

LE: The sooner you swap regular FoCo cookies for the Kosher ones, the happier you’ll be.

What are you most nervous for in the real world?

LE: Cooking. Frozen burritos will only get me so far.

What was the most exciting academic experience you’ve enjoyed at the College?

LE: Putting together the first edition of “40 Towns” with English professor Jeff Sharlet’s creative writing class. Reporting that piece hooked me on narrative journalism. More importantly, though, that class felt like a team of sorts — we

all wanted to bring out the best in each other’s work.

Blaze Joel — Sports editor What was your favorite story to cover during your time at The Dartmouth?

BJ: The women’s hockey game against Providence College my freshman year. The game was at Fenway Park, and I got to travel down and get on the field (and the ice), which was an absolutely astounding experience. I’ve been a Red Sox fan my whole life, so getting that experience (plus a bag of dirt from the third base line and a game puck) was incredible. Plus, the team won the game!

What are you most nervous for in the real world?

BJ: Being away from all of my close friends.

It’s so convenient to be able to pass people in FoCo or walk down the hall to say hi.

What would you tell your freshman-year self?

BJ: Take more “me time.” It’s easy to get

Eliza McDonough/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

Former Mirror editor Erin Landau ’15 enjoyed writing about a burger tour over sophomore summer.

MIRROR //5

caught up in the day-to-day minutiae at Dartmouth, so take some time and go for a walk, listen to some music, whatever to take a mental break.

How have you filled your time since leaving the paper?

BJ: Watching sports on my own computer instead of The D’s (is anyone surprised?). And my thesis (again, is anyone surprised?).

Erin Landau — Mirror editor What was the most exciting academic experience you’ve enjoyed at the College?

EL: “HIV/AIDS Through a Biosocial Lens” was hands down the best class I’ve taken at Dartmouth. The final project, where we had to create an intervention and prevention program for an at-risk population, was the most fulfilling academic experience I’ve ever had.

Favorite flavor at Morano Gelato?

EL: Nocciola and citrus.

What was your favorite story to cover during your time at The Dartmouth?

EL: Sophomore summer burger tour, hands down — delicious, well read and the first time I truly explored the Upper Valley.

Madison Pauly — Managing editor What was your favorite story to cover during your time at The Dartmouth?

MP: After the Pentagon announced in January 2013 that women would be allowed to serve in combat roles, I talked to women involved in Dartmouth’s ROTC to learn about their thoughts on gender in the military, their fears and their dreams for the future.

Estimate the number of KAF coffees you’ve consumed.

MP: Just this week, the number is too damn high.

What was your most peaceful memory at Dartmouth?

MP: Sitting on the roof of the American

Blaze Joel/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

Blaze Joel ’15 would have instructed his freshman-year self to partake in a little more personal time.

School of Tangier on the old Arabic FSP, where I made my best friends at Dartmouth. Sunrise over the city brought the call to prayer buzzing over loudspeakers on every mosque.

What would you tell your freshman-year self?

MP: It’s easy to believe that self-criticism will motivate you to improve when in truth, it just keeps you stuck where you are. Be kind to others, yes, and also kind to yourself.

Emma Moley — Dartbeat and Mirror editor What are you most nervous for about the real world?

EM: Since I’ll be living in New York along with many of my best friends, I’m worried I won’t branch out of the Dartmouth network and really get to know new people. That being said, I’m also worried about how I’ll adapt without that support system when I move away in a few years.

What would you tell your freshman-year self?

EM: Get more one-on-one dinners, since it’s pretty much impossible to get to know someone well with 15 other people around you. Take your professors out to lunch. Go to more events at

the Hop. Don’t eat EBAs cheese fries every weekend — it’s not normal.

What was your most terrifying moment at Dartmouth?

EM: During finals week sophomore summer, a few friends and I went on an impromptu Moosilauke hike which ended with us lost on the hardest trail in New Hampshire at 10 p.m. without food, flashlights or warm clothes. Memorable line from a phone call to a housemate: “Please call 911, and also order us a large vegetable pizza.”

Brett Drucker — Sports editor What was your favorite story to cover during your time at The Dartmouth?

BD: Olympic gold medalist Hannah Kearney ’15 on the transition to college life.

What are you most nervous for about the real world? ​ BD: Cooking dinner every night and not being able to rely on the Hop. How have you filled your time since leaving the paper?

BD: Writing a thesis in the government

Eliza McDonough/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

Madison Pauly ’15 wrote that her most peaceful moment here occured in her term abroad in Morocco.

Weija Tang/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

Emma Moley ’15 advises students to eat more dinners one-on-one.

6// MIRROR

Leaving the Buffet Behind Column

B y Ashley Ulrich

I have been exceptionally happy with my time here. Every day hasn’t been a Disney fairytale a la singing squirrels and dancing blue jays, but most days I fall asleep thinking that this is a very special place. I have been so lucky and privileged to be the recipient of boundless support and love from my parents and brother, but I also think that I have managed “to do Dartmouth right” for me — which I think entailed taking the classes that excited me, joining the organizations that open my eyes to the world and befriending the people whom I care about to the ends of the earth.

Let me backtrack. This is not a how-to guide for being happy at Dartmouth, rather some senior musings on why I think I have been. Maybe this is applicable and constructive for others who are struggling to find meaning in their daily interactions, but maybe not. This is mainly space for me to project my own voice.

First, classes. Reader, you should know that I read a physical copy of the course catalogue from cover to cover with a highlighter in hand during freshman orientation. I didn’t necessarily read every section thoroughly, but there were many that came away with marks, scribbles and exclamation points. Though I left this much-loved course catalogue at home after sophomore year, each term I put the Registrar’s deadlines on my calendar so that I would know when exactly I could find out the next term’s available courses.

Then came the lists — notes and notes of which classes I wanted to take, in what time slots, with which professors.

The product of this neuroticism was my taking classes in seven departments during freshman year and unknowingly completing all except for

one category of distributive requirements by the end of sophomore fall. More importantly, each term I found classes where the discussions from class continued out into the hallways to Collis lunch or FoCo dinner. Yes, I found my way toward a major, but not until the Registrar required me to file one. Rather, I took classes with bodies of knowledge that excited me — international relations, trade and development; law and justice; modern art and culture; Middle Eastern political and religious history; and literature, any and all literature.

I come away from Dartmouth feeling like I’ve just gorged myself on a buffet lunch special. Yes, there are so many things that I have not been able to fit in, but the classes that I have taken have taught me so much about myself and others and they will inspire me to continue to seek out a lifetime of learning.

In college, I signed up for one club — just one. I sought it out during orientation and was a wholehearted, fervent member until they kicked me out for being too old at the end of this past fall term. Ahem, I mean, new leadership cycled through and I was put out to pasture.

What was this wonderful, challenging, eyeopening club, you ask?

You’re reading it.

Freshman fall I wandered into The Dartmouth’s newsroom with interest but little experience. I wrote sports and arts stories in high school, but I’d never done news interviews.

Sports and arts, for the most part, are subjects people want to discuss. At The D, after minimal training, I was thrown into reporting stories that were intensely charged and often personal.

Racist and homophobic slurs scrawled in dormitories, Andrew Lohses’s allegations of hazing at Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, former College President Jim Kim’s swift exit from the College, a dispute among alumni about whether to “adopt” female transfer students to members of their class were all topics that I covered freshman year.

I love writing, and the challenge of trying to knowledge-up on a topic, get in contact with the relevant sources and assemble interview transcripts in a way that tells the most truthful and objectively reported story is one that I found thrilling. Working at The D made me more comfortable with calling persons on the phone and my helped ease the pressure of composing professional emails. The editors very quickly rooted the passive voice out of my high school writing. Subject-verb-receiving object: my friends make fun of me today for my strict adherence to these precisions.

Most important, working at The D helped me engage with a variety of people and organizations on campus that I likely otherwise would not have sought out nor likely known to exist. Interviews opened my eyes to the variety of opportunities and experiences that people have at this College.

I understand that the paper makes mistakes (it is produced, dear reader, by human beings), but I want to toot its horn for a hot second. There is no other organization on campus with the great hubris to ask students to be involved in producing a product for daily circulation. It is an immense project. Two hundred individuals work on the paper around the clock — from persons who distribute thousands of copies around campus

each morning, to business staff selling and formatting ads throughout the day, to reporters working at all hours to research, interview and write their articles, to editors who manage the moving pieces and format all the material for final publishing. Nothing at The D just happens.

And when the paper gets it right, when it gets the scoop on big stories and reports them with vigor, nuance and deep, deep empathy — it matters to campus.

Finally, my friends. I have the best friends.

Cobbled together from cross country and track, my sorority, my freshman floor, my classes, friends of friends who later became friends, persons that I can’t remember how they came into my life until they did, and stayed there, and it was great — I have been so lucky. I will miss so many people dearly when I pack up and head off in June, but I look forward to staying in touch and coming back for reunions. I can’t spew enough words in the space of this column to describe the funny, deeply thoughtful and loving persons whom I have had the pleasure to spend time with at this institution. They have made the darkest, coldest days a funny adventure of snowballs, hot cocoa and Netflix streaming, or at least tea and companionship in the library.

Like I said, this is not a how-to guide for how to be happy at Dartmouth. I don’t know what will make you happy in terms of your classes, clubs and relationships. But I know that for me, this has been a wonderful ride. For the little poopheads who still have a few more years here, the best of luck. Fifteens — we are still the best class ever, whether here in Hanover or out in the big wide world.

Once A Cynic, Now Reformed column

B y Emma Moley

There was a moment my freshman fall — standing on the snow-covered Green, wearing drenched sneakers and a crayon costume (yes, it snowed on Halloween) and surrounded by hundreds of my similarly elated classmates — when I declared in an uncharacteristic display of sappiness that I loved Dartmouth.

Now, I have always taken a kind of perverse comfort in being an expert at feeling, projecting and causing cynicism, as my parents would be happy to confirm. Since sentimentality terrifies me, there are few things in this world I will admit that I love — my family, one my two dogs (just kidding, Beckett), Russian novels and cheese.

But for a while, Dartmouth was one of them.

Eventually and perhaps inevitably, my rose-colored vision of the College gradually succumbed to my cynical poison as I learned that Dartmouth, alas, is not perfect. In coming to this realization, I descended into full-fledged disillusionment, ashamed at the moments of euphoric pride like that Halloween night, which in retrospect I deemed to be immature and silly.

The utopic myth that is Dartmouth nationalism, I decided, quashed dissenting expressions of real pain and real concern. As a way to make sure I did not fall into this trap, I unconsciously constructed a rule whereby anytime people mentioned anything remotely positive about the College, I internally dismissed them as willfully vapid and naïve, placing them within my mental construct of “Mainstream Dartmouth” and myself far away. To be content here was to be uncaring, I thought.

There were exceptions, of course. Occasionally and unexpectedly, over dinner or a fleeting conversation in the library, I would encounter

an individual who would briefly rip me out of my disillusionment, surprising me in his or her vibrancy and zeal in discussing difficult issues.

According to the logic of my rule, he or she should be callous. These people perplexed me, so I categorized them as rare exceptions to my rule.

But as I kept encountering exceptions, I realized that there might just be something wrong with the rule.

In my sweeping dismissal of those around me, I forgot that there is a difference between being cynical and being critical. As my father constantly reminds me, unbridled cynicism is not healthy and it is certainly not productive.

Sometime during the self-imposed misery that was 14F, I sent a long-winded, self-indulgent email to him with the subject line “My future,” in which I bemoaned the prospects of a certain-penniless career and the uninspired lives of those around me. He responded, concisely and simply, with “Emma, now is the time to be idealistic.”

In that moment, I realized that I had traded my idealism for disillusionment, and I had conflated critical thinking and cynicism. Critical thinking is not a despondent, futile task — it is one that demands active engagement with others. Being critical and being idealistic are not mutually exclusive. Rather, they go hand in hand. Instead of approaching every person with an awareness of what sets us apart — our major, our career plans, our view of the Greek system — I have come to see that trusting that others will be thoughtful and engaged is just as important as retaining my own convictions.

It doesn’t take a genius to discover that I use my cynicism to avoid being vulnerable. I exposed my heart my freshman year, when I suspended

my negativity and placed an outstanding degree of faith in the Dartmouth community. When I discovered that not every one of my peers always embodies the ideal of a daring, introspective truth-seeker dedicated to transforming the world.

I felt, perhaps irrationally, betrayed and foolish, so I reverted back to my protective veneer of apathy.

This was made easier by the fact that — whether it be a chemistry midterm, a job application or a formal date — we are constantly reminded that having high expectations invariably leads to disappointment. But my experience has taught me the opposite is true. When I lowered my expectations and braced myself for disappointment, I was not happy — I was apathetic.

There is a numbness inherent in the attitudes shared by both the jaded senior and the fervent freshman. Categorizing everyone and everything as either flawed or flawless makes it easier to distance yourself, but it also robs you of the chance to appreciate the complexity of every individual.

When I was hesitant to criticize anything about Dartmouth and to admit any dissatisfaction, I was equally as disengaged as I would become in my later years here.

In learning to balance my criticisms with an openness toward others — understanding that the moments of love for Dartmouth do not have to be guilty ones — I have realized that my facade of worn and wearied bitterness is just that — a facade. That I am 21 and am still figuring things out, as we all are. That the world has ample opportunities to surprise and even delight me. That distancing myself from those around me does not make me cool, or wise, or nonchalant — it only makes me lonely and indifferent.

That being said, though my bitterness may

have faded, my criticisms have not. There is an enormous amount about Dartmouth I firmly believe needs to change, and the reality is that while its students can be dynamic and insightful, they can also be violently ignorant and complacent. The rosy, nostalgic dear old Dartmouth I envisioned as a freshman may never return for me, and that’s a good thing, for it wasn’t based in anything real — any person or conversation or experience. But the elation I felt during my first Halloween here wasn’t insincere or trivial. It was one of many moments that I now know compose what I love about Dartmouth — the ones, both silly and serious, spontaneous and unpackaged, where I drop my fatalistic facade and let myself connect to those around me.

This is why I have come to believe it is beneficial to avoid turning people and experiences into abstractions, and when I say this, I mean it in both directions. Just as behind the “Wall Street Frat Bro” package lies an individual, so too does someone standing behind the “Angry Radical” one. You can make anyone fit into a box if you are determined enough. But in doing so, you miss out on the challenge of actually engaging with others and appreciating the compelling complexities of your peers.

So here is a piece of unsolicited advice from a faux cynic, as a friend once called me. If you are cynical, try to find something or someone here to love, keeping in mind that each one of us has our own perspective, fears and wishes. And if you aren’t cynical, understand that this does not mean you can’t — or shouldn’t — be critical. Because thinking critically is the key to tapping into your truest and richest emotions, the most powerful of which is empathy.

FRIDAYS WITH MARIAN

MIRROR //7

Boots and RallIES COLUMN

By Aaron Pellowski

COLUMN By Marian Lurio

It’s time to pop this cherry! Your cherry? My cherry, everyone’s cherry. Maraschino cherries.

And to be clear, by cherry, I mean the Dartmouth bubble. I guess what I’m trying to say is: Scoot, skiddadle! Get out of here you perv! It’s time to graduate.

Who will carry on my legacy/spirit? To whom shall I pass the torch? If history is any indication of the future — thanks to my Dartmouth education, I am approximately 70 percent sure that history is the best predictor of future behavior — the former man behind the mask of Sun God will still be terrorizing the streets of Hanover and our worst nightmares. Literally, as I am writing this I have heard him driving in circles around campus for the past three hours. HAGS, never change.

Indeed, it’s long past overdue that I throw in a bit of a discussion of the alleged grad student who masquerades as this deity/foreign idol (You have to check out the Sun God’s Facebook fan page for the [very] detailed explanation of all that this masked figure represents for JJR) and who knows how to put on some great performance art for the Hanover community. But actually how does the man, the myth, the legend support himself? Trust fund?

Seriously though @SunGod, never stop wearing those tight red/white (depending on your mood when you get dressed?) pants you sexy mofo.

So it’s not even June yet, but as I always say, a little role-play never hurt nobody, right? I’ll be the graduate. You can be Phil Hanlon.

Ready for a little more role-play? I’ll be the valedictorian (still waiting to hear back about whether I got that…) and you can be the Wall Street sellout. So, congratulations to all my future financier friends. I hope you made the most of your time as a Dartmouth student and grew a taste for the fine wine that is cocaine, the official jet fuel of investment bankers everywhere.

Don’t worry mom: I honestly don’t know what finance people with the most significant drug problems/most need for drugs use to get by, but as a soon-to-be Ivy League grad, I am making an educated guess here.

Who among us will be the next Thaddeus Stevens? Meredith Grey? Timothy Geithner?

Mindy Kaling? Me. Connie Britton? Still me.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (NY)? Also me. Michael Corleone? You guessed it — me, again.

On the other end of the spectrum, a good number of you graduates sitting in those plastic folding chairs today can’t be weaned off the teat that is academia. To the many grads pursuing a higher degree — well played. I guess if you can get into Dartmouth, you are quite likely going to be more prone to being a professional student.

As the Class of 2015 valedictorian, I have the rest of my life planned out, obviously.

I will not be taking any further questions on this topic.

I may be onto bigger and better things — Harvard med school calls! But I’ll never forget the little people whose backs I stepped on to get to where I am today — a gainfully employed but somehow-also-in-med school adult, a food shelter volunteer and a certified genius.

Pause for a sec — it’s too complicated to explain but I would like to reiterate that I do indeed have a job and steady income to support me and the cats I plan to embrace as my postgrad children. And don’t you worry, dear old Dartmouth, I will be back. Oh will I be back!

Hide your kids, hide your wife.

Phil, we’ll hide from your wife together.

Let’s just say no future Hanover High student

is safe. There are so many aspects of my Dartmouth experience that I will miss with all my black heart. I can’t bear the thought of parting with this elite institution.

TBH, graduation is going to be a butt-sweatplagued, embarrassing affair. It will be particularly embarrassing if, like me, you are a lady who has a tendency to sweat a great deal even when she isn’t looking at/drooling over Mr. Handsome Moustache Guy himself.

It’s going to be hot, hot, hot on June 14.

Have I checked the weather? No. But we all know it will be.

Thomas Edison once said: “Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.”

What about those of us Dartmouth undergrads who have self-diagnosed overproduction-ofsweat-related afflictions?

Just know that while I may not have cum laude next to my name on the commencement program (but don’t count me out just yet!), I am doing 99 percent of what is necessary for genius.

As a Harvard Medical School student, I can say with certainty that I have the gene for sweating major balls all the time.

I was not as genetically blessed in the intelligence department.

So I guess the message here is that while I think we all know that I’m not a certifiable genius, I sweat like one.

Honestly, though, I need to check my privilege — those of us who are in the top one percent of sweaters have done nothing to deserve our esteemed position.

Despite the one percent sweaty status I have just revealed, my life has never and never will be a day at the beach (somewhere along the coastline of New Jersey, of course). I still don’t have the iPhone 6 and if my handling of this embarrassing fact is any indication of the challenges I continue to overcome, I have the true grit required to make a name for myself in the field that I have a job in. Because, as I’ve made very clear, I have both a spot at medical school and a full-time job, and, as I’ve stressed, I will also simultaneously be the mistress and lawyer for one Adnan Syed.

Court adjourned, your honor. ;) I have some advice for those who aren’t leaving Hanover. Acquire mini hard alcohol bottles from a local hotel room minibar and stick them in the one to two orifices that can accommodate these items.

To the College, I have just a few demands.

First, please pick an actual school mascot.

What’s something we can all agree on? There’s the moose (a surprisingly dangerous beast) and Big Green (our current mascot is #basic). Keggy the keg? Honestly, I think Keggy is a tool. He really wears his alcoholic predilections/emotions on his green sleeve. Act like you’ve been there before, Keggy.

I myself am partial to Big D. It really rolls off, or on, the tongue.

The protests are really starting to lack that pizzazz that they once had. If I don’t see a takeover of at least one administrative building in the next few months, you know I won’t be sending in that alumni dough next year (not to be crass, but yes I am making bank at my job next year).

As my career as an esteemed, respected columnist comes to a close, I can’t help but wonder: Will I have to start writing my thoughts about life in the fast lane/the rich and powerful/famous in a diary?

That would be truly pathetic. Therefore, I’m in.

“If Jesus came back and saw what’s going on in his name, he’d never stop throwing up.” ­— “Hannah and Her Sisters” (1986) A week before I graduated the Delaware Advanced Institute for Unreality Studies, I was sent for by Evelyn R. Flyte, Ph.D., assistant dean of the Academy, adjunct professor of thanatopoesis, DAIUS ’76 and an every-once-in-a-while conversational companion of mine.

I found her as usual, seated four feet from the door beside a bottle-glass window upon her pale yellow, self-designed Automon (an electric ottoman that heaved organically, as if breathing).

She had one hand rested gently on her smooth, hairless head, the other lay just as gently on the spine of her Waterpole Award-winning poetry collection “She Sells Herself By The Seashore” — a favorite of mine, actually. (The epigraph is some line about christopurgatives from the only Max von Sydow film I’ve seen that isn’t directed

by Bergman.)

“This is the last one, no?” Flyte asked, before I could say, “Greetings.”

“The last what, please?” I asked.

“The last week of you and DAIUS. Listen, Horowitz,” she started, with a grin. “It’s not my aesthetic to smile and squeeze bits of tired wisdom in the palms of departing students, but I’m itching to break character at the moment.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. So here....” She spun her book across the tabletop in front of me, “... you are, my love.

Best of luck with your NEA Dartmouth thing.

Bye!” And then she spun around on the Automon herself, away from the bottle-glass window. I walked out, unfolding the navy felt cover with silver trim. In faint, brown, tight script she’d written on Page One: “Jocelyn Dierdre Horowitz — Nothing is ever as good or bad as you think it will be. —ERF.” In four years I reckon I’ve written maybe 50 papers and taken about as many tests and quizzes combined. Almost all of it binged and purged, as quick in entering as exiting. The low rate of retention is the famous hallmark of the liberal arts education: all this junk — gerunds, quasars, ratiocination, phenomenology, Italian I, crystal matrices, Kant, dynamos, whatever — is suppose to teach me “how to think,” like my brain’s a pipe carved to Winchester-perfection by a steady spray of facts. OK. But there was something I did learn for sure.

It was the same thing for which I gave Dr. Flyte the benefit of the doubt by believing it outright — i.e. the thing about nothing ever being as good or bad as you thing.

I am a planning animal. I spent all of every interim getting all the facts of the future together so that I would know just what to feel psyched about and what should make me worry. And then school starts up, and term after term after

term, I’m wrong. A course I thought would be amazing turned out to be the worst classroom experience I’d had in my life. Another course that I took for the distributive credit, and which I thought would be a joke, made me regret not at least minoring in film. Every term when I thought I was doomed to be loveless and lonely, I found new, impossible persons in whom to engross myself. People I counted on changed heart and vanished, too.

I have basically given up on thinking about the future since, as I’ve come to learn about myself, I rarely have notions and emotions that outlive the wind. The question “What are you doing after graduation?” usually means, “What are you doing immediately after you graduate?”

But you might also take it to mean, “What are you going to do with the rest of your life, now that you’ve beaten your way through a nanny system of soft, bureaucratic hazing, and for the first time in your four years of being an adult, you will actually be treated like one, like it or not?”

I don’t want to kid myself that I have an answer to that question, like anything inspires me enough to feel as if I’ve got all this incomplete masterwork to labor through, any cause to which to dedicate my life. I’m not excited about the future. OK. I’m also not afraid, and I’m also not inert. All the green-tinted, Dartmouth memories, laid like lenses over one another, will slowly lose their resolution as I graduate from one terrace of life to another, as every term becomes a faded epilogue to the forgotten one preceding. Your dreams, as they grow vaguer and more engorged, drift through time while you hang onto to their zeppelin underbellies. I think it is better to keep low to the ground, keep your eye clear as the bleb of an icicle, and keep pouncing on the short-term, crack open each day and see what it’s good for. Every time I hear about some Old Testament quantity of people perishing in a forest fire or an earthquake, I wonder how many of them took their vitamins every morning, turned down red meat and tobacco, looked both ways when crossing the street — only to get snuffed out among the living regardless, double-crossed by their own chimerical destiny.

We are small containers, not big ones. We do not make ourselves full over centuries of tender management, but only in the moment. We should not dream, we should not hope, we should not plan for greatness. Only make one moment after another as precious as possible. Every suffering minute is a jewel. Fulfillment is half a question of whether your life matters in the eyes of others and half a question of whether it matters to you.

Ask both those questions constantly. Swallow life with your eyes wide open, spit it out and swallow again. But don’t take my word for it. I’m J. Dierdre Horowitz, and I’m just a regular guy. This is the last one.

8// MIRROR

Embracing the Unexpected Column

B y Sasha Dudding

Column

Eliza McDonough/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

Sasha Dudding ’15 writes about the importance of hearing others’ stories.

During our time here, we watch as the strangers we are thrown together with in this remote place become our closest friends — and sometimes, as they become strangers again. We meet people from across the world we never would have met otherwise, and, if we’re lucky or if we ask, we get to hear their stories. Yet this is all too rare.

This place may be older than the country it’s in, but nearly everything about it is transient, anonymous. Every year brings 1,000-plus new faces who will never know the 1,000-plus who left just a few months before.

It goes in reverse, too. I like to think I’ve made the most of Dartmouth, but I can promise you that by the time the Class of 2019 graduates, nobody here will know who I am.

In many ways, this is as it should be — we move on, we let younger and wider-eyed students take our places. Still, it is a shame how many people we leave the College without knowing.

Before coming to Hanover, there are always a few people a class hears about. For us, it was an Olympic gold medalist. A year before, there was the boy who harnessed the wind, and, two years after, an activist fighting for the DREAM Act and her right to stay in this country.

But this leaves thousands of stories unheard, unlearned from.

I have a story of my own, too, one that you wouldn’t know unless you knew.

My father disappeared when I was five. I usually say died, which is simpler, but that’s not quite right. He was on a trip to Florida and left the house where he was staying. He said he was going to the beach. He did not come back in the morning.

He was last seen in grey jogging shorts and a white T-shirt. A sculptor by trade, among his latest artworks were drawings titled, “Lonely Head, Dead” and “Drowned.”

The police, Coast Guard and the detective agreed that the currents were strong and that my father was intoxicated and had most likely drowned. But there was no proof, and no end to the questions my five-year-old self had.

I turned to writing to answer these questions for myself, crafting stories with neatly tied-up endings. I wrote poems that described the details of that night — how cold the water felt, the red numbers on the clock left behind.

The curiosity I brought to my own situation and the love of writing I developed along the way would later find other outlets — journalism, for one.

Storytelling is one of the most meaningful parts of the craft to me. I get much less out of the scoop or the above-the-fold headline than I do the discovered narrative, the life laid out on the page.

My sophomore year, I wrote an in-depth series on sexual assault for The Dartmouth and heard tales of strength and resilience from women who I’d seen regularly for terms without

Defining my Dartmouth

knowing what they’d experienced. They shared their fears and vulnerabilities too, the ones covered up in the “hi-how-are-you-good-you” exchanges we have every day.

This reporting experience gave me a window into a serious problem on college campuses, but also an unforgettable reminder that the quiet girl in your class or the girlfriend-of-a-friend-ofa-friend has a life whose depth and shape you could never guess at.

Outside of The D, some of my most memorable experiences here have also involved the chance to listen to other people’s stories, whether at organized events like Women of Dartmouth or in late-night conversations with friends.

I’m certainly guilty of the surface-level interactions myself. The countless hours in Robinson Hall and FoCo to-go dinners that were part of my four years on The D often left me running from one place to the next. But I have tried to remember how important it is to hear the stories of the people with whom I share this school, many of whom have so many lessons and experiences I’ll never know.

During our first interactions with the COllege, as applicants, the admissions officers who read our essays learned more about us than many of our classmates ever will. In the brief time before they set aside our file for the next, they read about our carefully packaged pasts, presents and dreams.

They knew us better than the person who’s in three of your classes but you never talk to, better than the rando you got naked with last weekend, better than the freshman floormates or tripees you say hi to about half the time.

Our stories have changed since then, as have the ways in which we tell them to others and ourselves. What hasn’t changed is the importance of sharing them, of hearing others’ stories.

So, I want to give you a challenge — a new bucket-list item.

Come graduation, we’ll sit in what I hear are sweaty and unbreathable robes and listen as our classmates’ names are read aloud. We might be thinking about how much we’ll miss this place.

We might be thinking about lunch.

I’ll also be wondering about the person behind each of those names, the individual in each of those identical robes. Maybe I’ll know a fact or two about them — Greek house, major, a friend in common — or maybe they’ll be a blank slate.

Regardless, my time will be up. Over the following days, we will spread out across the world, each unknown classmate a closed book whose pages I’ll never read.

Yours isn’t. In your remaining time, hear from as many of the people in this place as possible, and share your own story along the way. When they read your classmates’ names aloud, know as many of their stories as you can. You won’t know them all, and that’s a loss, but you’ll be better off for trying.

B y Caela Murphy

A few weeks ago, in one of my few forays into the wilderness since my Hiking 1 trip freshman year, I spent the night with a group of friends at the Class of 1966 Lodge, also known as Harris Cabin. As we laughed through rounds of Taboo and “yum-yummed” the remainder of what must have been an industrial-sized block of Cabot cheese, the daylight receded, bringing with it the serene darkness and the distant, unknown living sounds characteristic of a forest at night. We staked out our sleeping locations, a few others and I opting for the cool air of the balcony overlooking the clearing.

Laying out there after everyone had fallen asleep and looking up at the stars that are only visible in the depths of nature, (and which, consequently, I’ve rarely seen), I did what any self-respecting liberal arts student would do — I searched for meaning. Certain pithy, sentimental ideas came to mind: that although I’d be leaving Dartmouth in a month, I would have the memory of this night forever; that countless other Dartmouth students before me had slept in that place and looked up at the same stars, and countless others would follow; that I had come full circle and emerged a more complete person since staying at the same cabin four years earlier during my First-Year Trip.

Needless to say, these weren’t earth-shattering observations, and in their totalizing and clichéd character, they rang insincere. I was stretching to construct a summative meaning for the night when, in reality, its significance was more nebulous, harder to define. Listening in the dark to the babbling of the nearby stream mingling with the calm, even breaths of the people that had become so central to my life here huddled around me, I knew the evening had been a special one, but my varied attempts to derive an essential meaning out of it proved, time and again, reductive.

For this reason, I initially dreaded the thought of writing this column.

As a humanities student, I’ve spent most of my Dartmouth career piecing together narratives, be they long research papers or short responses. I’ve become comfortable pulling together information to present a succinct argument, complete with supporting evidence and a clear thesis. It’s a process that I’ve come to enjoy in my time as a student, and probably one of the main things that drew me to writing, and later editing, for The Dartmouth. I appreciated the structure that lent the stories shape — an engaging lede, followed by the most pertinent information and then details and sources that brought that information to life. I loved sorting through facts and events to arrive at a central significance, the beauty of a story well-told.

And like most of us who have been through the wringer of applying for post-graduate careers, internships, fellowships and more, I’ve gotten better at summarizing. In carefully crafted resumes and cover letters, I’ve attempted to tell the story of my academic and professional life as an aspiring entry-level employee — a narrative of obstacles overcome, personal growth attained and future challenges eagerly anticipated, with a protagonist who’s like its author except infinitely more selfassured.

But defining myself — or, more specifically, my Dartmouth experience — has never come easy to me. That’s not to say that this place hasn’t had a meaningful impact on me. Indeed, the past four years have without question been the most impactful of my life, defining me in ways I hadn’t expected and, often, in ways I didn’t realize I needed. In separating me from some of my closest friends during multiple terms, the D-Plan did exactly what I feared it would and exactly what I needed, keeping me from complacency and forcing me to constantly seek out and cultivate new relationships. Attending the school that one parent and two (now three) brothers had attended before me and being confronted with the eerie similarities between our Dartmouth experiences (yes, we all worked at the circulation desk) drove me to continuously pursue new trajectories in an attempt to lay claim to my own territory here.

The past four years have been a process of flux for me, perhaps most definable in their resistance to definition. And though I’ve grown through that instability, it’s made it difficult to locate the crux of my Dartmouth experience or to find a steady framework through which to articulate it.

When I sat down to write this column, I was met with the realization that I’ve been subconsciously formulating the thesis statement to my college career for the past four years and with the anxiety that four years later I’m still searching for one. It’s a bit like the innumerable moments when, walking across the Green on a winter’s night, I’ve stopped to take a picture of Baker Tower in the purplish afterglow of a snowfall and found, of course, that my phone could not come close to capturing it. Try as I might to articulate my time here — to turn four years of searching for home in new areas of campus, of agonizing over failures to balance obligations to different people and of sensing friendships mature over 2 a.m. cheese fries into a cohesive story — the thread never holds. The theme, ever elusive, escapes me.

But ultimately, I’m realizing that I’m content without definition. Being unable to put into words what the College has meant for me is scary, but so too is the thought that my time here can be summarized by a central theme or two and a few key lessons that I’ve learned in the past four years. The story hasn’t ended yet, and even after graduation a few weeks from now, I know that my Dartmouth experience will continue to shape me in different ways, variably defining me while I continue to reflect on it in new lights.

That night at Harris Cabin, I failed pretty miserably in my attempts to construe the meaning of the moment. Taking it for what it was, however, I think I’ve come a bit closer to understanding, in the simplest terms, what Dartmouth has been for me — a beautiful place in the middle of the woods encompassing people who have loved, challenged and changed me, and to whom I’ve gradually become more willing to offer myself in return.

It’s a story without a driving conflict, without an arc, without resolution. It’s a narrative I’m still writing, and one I’m nowhere close to completing. I’m in no rush to finish it.

Weija Tang/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

Caela Murphy ’15 learns to be comfortable without definition.