MIRROR 4.10.19
REDESIGNING SUCCESS 3
A CHANGE OF SPACE 4-5
TTLG: EMPTY YOUR CUP 7 BELLA JACOBY/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF
2// MIRR OR
Editors’ Note
Q&A
By The Dartmouth Staff
What’s your blueprint for success?
DIVYA KOPALLE/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF
When we think of blueprints, a lot of things come to mind: planning, designing, rearranging. We use blueprints and their corresponding process of design thinking to construct the soundest building, to create the best D-Plan and even to solve our problem sets. As students, we like having steps to follow in order to ultimately be successful. Having things planned out provides us with a sense of reassurance, with the comfort of knowing that it will all make sense in the end. But sometimes, we hit a block in the road, and things don’t go exactly as planned. Even so, things have a funny way of working out. In this week’s issue of the Mirror, we’re exploring designing and planning at Dartmouth. We take a closer look into the studio art major and the prettiest buildings on campus (looking at you, Sanborn). We also explore how first-years’ expectations of their Dartmouth experiences have differed from reality — how having no foolproof “blueprint for success” may even be a good thing. So readers, as you peruse through this issue, we advise the following: Don’t try to have your life here too planned out. Approach Dartmouth day by day, building by building and experience by experience. Have a blueprint in mind, but don’t set it in stone — at the end of the day, it’s just one step in the process. Happiness might come when you least expect it — when you have totally diverged from your blueprint.
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4.10.19 VOL. CLXXV NO. 13 MIRROR EDITORS NIKHITA HINGORANI KYLEE SIBILIA ASSOCIATE MIRROR SARAH ALPERT EDITORS NOVI ZHUKOVSKY EDITOR-IN-CHIEF DEBORA HYEMIN HAN PUBLISHER AIDAN SHEINBERG EXECUTIVE EDITOR JULIAN NATHAN
Sarah Alpert ’21: Planners and proactivity. By keeping organized, I not only get my work done, but I also feel like I can pull the different threads of my life together and not be overwhelmed by all the different responsibilities I have on campus. Yuna Kim ’22: My Moleskine notebook! It has my entire schedule, so many to-do lists and all the crazy ideas that pop up in my head throughout the day. Eliza Jane Schaeffer ’20: I don’t think there’s any such thing. Novi Zhukovsky ’22: Strong coffee. Josephine Kim ’UG: Be the genuine friend I want, begin with knowledge, but leave it for wisdom. Claire Callahan ’22: A confident attitude that cheers on other people’s successes. What’s your favorite building on campus? SA: Sanborn Library YK: The first building that comes to mind is Rauner. It’s absolutely gorgeous with all the natural light flooding in, and it’s definitely my favorite place to study, especially on a sunny day. EJS: The Current Periodicals Room in Baker-Berry. NZ: Sanborn. JK: Sanborn reading room. CC: Sanborn. How have you gone about designing your Dartmouth experience? SA: I didn’t really design it. In fact, I’ve changed my Dartmouth experience pretty drastically from year to year. Freshman year, I was part of the Wind Ensemble, so I spent much of my time rehearsing in the Hop. I also thought I was going to be a Chinese major. Sophomore year, I quit Wind Ensemble
and joined The Dartmouth and other organizations, and I switched academic gears from Chinese to English. For me, Dartmouth hasn’t been about designing a concrete academic or extracurricular plan, calculated to get me the right job after graduation. I’m just doing what I enjoy, and that seems to change from term to term. YK: In college, I really wanted to focus on what I value most, so a lot of my time at Dartmouth is centered around doing things that make me happy, like practicing yoga, taking classes I love and making time in my D-plan to study abroad in places like Spain and France. EJS: It’s definitely been a process of trial and error. I really like the Michelangelo quote, “Just chip away the stone that doesn’t look like David.” NZ: Still figuring that one out! JK: Do something new, and meet new friends every term. CC: I found out what I was passionate about and looked for the best classes and professors. I found a community where the people made me feel comfortable and committed to it fully. Design your ideal coffee order: SA: Dark roast, no room. YK: Iced hazelnut coffee with a splash of almond milk. EJS: Soy cappuccino, two Splendas, extra cinnamon. NZ: Medium almond milk latte. JK: Double shot Italian expresso, steamed oat milk, cinnamon, nutmeg and cocoa powder. CC: Iced almond milk latte with extra ice and a mocha shot. How do you decorate your room on campus? SA: I have this tapestry from Urban Outfitters, which sounds basic, but it’s actually a painting by an artist named KT Smail. It’s basically a giant picture of a girl’s face, extending to a rogue nipple
at the bottom. Other than that, I have the usual photographs of friends and family and twinkle lights above my bed. YK: Lots and lots of pictures of friends I’ve made here and ones from back home. Also, I love adorning my walls with posters from our local poster store right here in Hanover. EJS: The most prominent decorative feature of my room is probably the Kentucky flag hanging on my wall. It reminds me of home. NZ: String lights, posters, fuzzy pillows and pictures of friends and family. JK: Keeping it simple is keeping it real. CC: A colorful tapestry, Christmas lights and photos. Why do you think design is important? SA: Because aesthetics matter at least as much as anything else in life. We all notice the world around us, and we want it to be as beautiful as possible. That’s the aim of all art — to draw beauty out of the ordinary. The design of everyday buildings and objects forms our experience of beauty in the world each day. YK: Design is people’s first interaction with anything and everything they encounter in the world, whether they realize it or not. Good design goes happily unnoticed, but bad design sticks out like a sore thumb. Design is the glue that holds together and elevates any human experience. EJS: The word “design” implies intention. I think it’s important to be intentional about how you parse out your time and attention. NZ: Design is a reflection of our own creativity and ingenuity. JK: Humans are both creation and creators, so design is how we express our identities. CC: Physical spaces allow us to relax and have privacy in a comfortable, homey space. Planning and designing our futures give us structure and goals.
Redesigning Success: Expectation vs. Reality MIRR OR //3
STORY
By Claire Callahan
Going to college is scary. Being in college is scary. I combat this fear with planning. On the drive from Alexandria, VA to Hanover, I opened the Notes app on my phone and made a list of goals that would allow me to become the version of myself that would thrive at Dartmouth. I’ve stuck to some of them. Some didn’t work out because I didn’t understand then what it was really like being here. Planning allows me to feel like I have a handle on the future, but I’ve accepted that I have to revise my expectations when life happens. Samantha Locke ’22 told me she worked out her entire D-Plan during orientation week, complete with possible course listings, major requirements, a Foreign Study Program and even an exchange term at another university. “It changed a lot over time,” she said. “I was thinking of doing astronomy and English with a concentration in creative writing, [but] now I’m thinking physics and film.” Locke doesn’t think of herself as a serial planner; she just wants to make the most of her time. “There’s so much I want to do,” she said. “I don’t have the time to figure it out as I go. I want to plan it out and be super focused.” Her dream is to be a prolific writer. Someday, Locke hopes to be the lead writer on her own show. After that, she’ll write novels, poetry and children’s books. So why is she majoring in physics? “I just like science,” Locke shrugged. “I want to do it because I can and I’m here.” Like Locke, Benjamin Brody ’22 isn’t on the path he imagined — but in the opposite way. He thought he would switch majors — but didn’t. “I applied as a classics major because I liked classics in high school,” he said. “But I figured that in college, I’d decide it wasn’t practical and end up doing economics and government and corporate things in the future.” Brody’s love of classics has been reaffirmed, and he hopes to teach it in the future — but that isn’t all he wants to do.
“I think I’m gonna be the kind of person who bounces around in different fields and jobs,” he said. “That’s part of the great thing about the liberal arts education.” In high school, Brody felt like he was too entrenched in his routine: schoolwork and hockey. Coming into college, he wanted to bring this bouncearound attitude into his extracurricular life as well. “I don’t like getting caught too much in one community, one group, one routine,” Brody said. But he’s surprised himself by finding spaces he wants to be in more permanently. “I’ve found some communities on campus where I feel really comfortable,” Brody said. “In spite of myself, I think it’s best for me to spend time in those communities because I do enjoy them and there’s no reason not to.” The communities Brody has become a part of are not the ones he expected. He thought he was tired of hockey after high school, but after being roped into going to tryouts, it’s become one of his favorite activities. He thought he’d be in pre-professional clubs, but has instead built a sense of place in the Dartmouth Outing Club. “I have a different sense of my values,” he said. “What I’m getting out of college isn’t necessarily just the education, but the holistic experience that will help me grow.” Fulya Dal ’22 thought she would hate her Dartmouth experience. She is an international student from Turkey, and she said her high school was incredibly competitive. Even though Dartmouth is in the Ivy League, she noted that it is not viewed as highly internationally. “I had never even heard of Dartmouth,” Dal said. “That’s maybe something the school has to work on, because internationally, its reputation is basically none.” It wasn’t just Dartmouth’s lack of name recognition that gave Dal doubt. “When you search Dartmouth, the only thing that comes up is Greek life and hazing, so I was really intimidated by everything,” she said. “My image of
college was that I would just study in my room [the whole time].” Even after she arrived, Dal thought this wasn’t the place for her. “My plan, even during [First-Year Trips], was to apply for a transfer,” she said. “I talked to my undergraduate dean before classes started.” But the day classes started, everything changed. Dal said she started to love Dartmouth and all of the activities she was getting involved in. “I had a schedule — I had a life here,” Dal said. “I tried out a lot of clubs. I had no idea what I wanted to do, so I was [just] trying a lot of things.”
As the newly accepted ’23s prepare to arrive on campus, current students offer advice for their expectations and plans. Dal specifically addressed international students who might have a skewed perception of Dartmouth. “Don’t be so biased,” she said. “If you haven’t visited the campus, and you don’t know a graduate, it’s really hard to have an opinion about the College.” Locke stressed the importance of not always being a go-getter. “If you have the same sort of intensity that I do in terms of feeling like you need to do things, make sure to rest,” she said. Brody was told by everyone to “try
things,” but there’s more to it than that. “Don’t just go to the first club meeting — try it for a month or two,” he said. “It’s definitely worth it and leaves you with better relationships.” These students differed in how and how much they planned, but what they had in common was that their plans changed. My goals help me stay hopeful and keep looking forward, but they wouldn’t be helpful if they didn’t change to match my constantly shifting life. Dal sums it up with a shrug: “Don’t plan too much. [Plans] change anyway.”
A Change of Space: Architectural Contrasts at Dartmouth 4// MIRR OR
STORY
By Sarah Alpert
A few days ago, my friend texted me with horrifying news: on Saturday afternoon at the end of week one, Sanborn Library was full. Armchairs piled with jackets, laptops crammed on tables, every-alcove-occupied kind of full. Spring term is notoriously busy, and so far, it’s lived up to expectations. As soon as the term began, I started moaning about the crowds at Collis. By day three, I shifted my schedule to hit the shortest wait for my soup or smoothie, resigned to scary-long KAF lines and struggled to find a seat in Baker Lobby at 9:30 a.m. But even as I adapted to the influx of students
on campus, I thought Sanborn was safe from the crowds, forever quiet and half-empty. A creature of habit, I spend most of my time in a few spaces: Sanborn Library, where I hide amongst the books; One Wheelock; the Current Periodicals Room; and sometimes the Tower Room. For me, Dartmouth is a series of arched reading nooks, carved wood and musty shelves. Without conscious thought, I lurk in the College’s oldest buildings term after term, and these dusty, dim spaces feel like home. Naturally, I get cranky when my usual spots are crowded beyond
belief — when I feel like I’m plowing through a shoulder-high snow bank just to cross from one side of Collis to the other. Thanks to the D-Plan, the number of students on campus fluctuates drastically from term to term, and with growing class sizes, campus infrastructure seems to burst at the seams when most of the student body is in Hanover. Of course, students bring Dartmouth to life. But in my opinion, campus loses some of its charm when we have to search desperately just to find an empty chair. A place like Sanborn demands elbow room, space to cross your legs while you work, and I’d rather not spend
half an hour looking for a comfortable place to sit. Perhaps I shouldn’t feel entitled to a well-worn couch and desk plank every time I want to crack open a book. But hey, Dartmouth spoils us. With the exception of housing, we largely get to choose the spacial experience we want on this campus. While I’ve nestled into Dartmouth’s lamp-lit quiet zones, many students only study in Berry Library. Some prefer the newer science buildings or artsy-modern spaces, like the Black Family Visual Arts Center. Dartmouth may have one of the nation’s most iconic, old-fashioned libraries, but other parts of campus
are strikingly modern, from the Life Sciences Center to the recentlyrenovated Hood Museum of Art. Every day, we get to choose between vastly different study environments, and that is pretty inspiring. Despite my antiquarianism, the contrast between contemporary buildings and older architecture is actually my favorite part of Dartmouth. My freshman fall, I started noticing architectural clashes around campus — places where glass and brick, new and old, collide. Look up, and you can see where the ivy-clad bricks of Wilder Hall meet the soaring windows of Kresge Library, and where
SARAH ALPERT /THE DARTMOUTH STAFF
MIRR OR //5
SARAH ALPERT /THE DARTMOUTH STAFF
the sleek lines of Berry intersect with encourage a progressive mindset. I love this contrast between the old Baker. The 1990s expansion of Collis slips neatly into the original buildings at Dartmouth, and I love brickwork, and the Hood Museum’s what contrasting styles represent. So square façade contrasts starkly with why do I still migrate to Sanborn day Wilson Hall’s turrets and red brick, after day, term after term? Part of me is too lazy to think of another place built in the 1880s. These juxtapositions of old and new to study. Another part of me simply are not only charming, but they also associates Sanborn’s lamp-lit, calming represent the diversity of intellectual atmosphere with productivity, and I (and aesthetic) ideas squeezed onto our fear distraction if I go anywhere else. But as I enter small campus. my sixth term Hanover might "Could we avoid this on campus, I be a classic New restlessness if we just can sense myself England town, explored different starting to feel but sparks of antsy. Especially modern design architectural styles as Dartmouth c o m p l e m e n t around campus, teems with the brick-andincorporating new students, as even shutters standard. my quiet study As Dartmouth’s study spots into our spaces grow too student body, routines?" crowded, maybe culture and it’s time to try curriculum gradually become more inclusive, something new. According to psychological research, it seems like campus architecture increasingly reflects this coalescence of repetitive routines lead to feelings of different identities, merging historical boredom, especially when we always college buildings with modern styles. work in the same physical space. By Slowly but surely, the College inches shaking up our environment, even away from its past, and new designs with small changes, we can increase
our enjoyment of work and other daily habits. At Dartmouth, so many students talk about feeling confined to a small Hanover “bubble,” and by the end of 10 weeks, we feel the need to get away — to see other, more exciting parts of the world. Could we avoid this restlessness if we just explored different architectural styles around campus, incorporating new study spots into our routines? Personally, I think it’s time to break my cycle of Collis, Sanborn, class, repeat. A brand-new, modern study space might reinvigorate my mind and inspire me to keep doing homework even as the sun climbs higher in the spring sky. In fact, it would do us all good to sit somewhere fresh each day. Although the crowds this term are frustrating, maybe they will encourage students like me to explore new corners of campus. All it takes is a few steps to experience an entirely different environment, to replace musty old furniture with fresh stone and modern lines. Swap book-filled alcoves for soaring glass windows, and campus will feel a little bigger, the world a little closer, the crowds a little thinner. A small change of space goes a long way.
SARAH ALPERT /THE DARTMOUTH STAFF
Life Imitates Art: Senior Studio Art Portfolios 6 // MIRR OR
STORY
By Alexa Dicostanzo
How many of us spend our days pursuing the subjects we truly love? I’m talking real academic passion: waking up excited for class, looking forward to work, dreaming about future assignments, an “I eat sleep and breathe what I do” kind of passion. “Study without desire spoils the memory,” said Leonardo da Vinci, “and it retains nothing that it takes in.” I can certainly confirm: The only thing I retained from a few classes freshman fall was a desire to stay as far away from certain subjects as possible. Enthusiasm in the face of heavy course loads is a rarity. But as a senior, I can appreciate now how exciting
it must have been to devote so much time to one’s own creative endeavors during college. Dartmouth is not an art school, but its resources are undeniably far-reaching, and the fact that my photography teacher’s work has been exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art is pretty much all I need to know. For this issue, I spoke with three senior studio art majors, all of whom are hard at work on pieces for the department-wide exhibition in May. Lucy Li ’19 seems like one of those people who doesn’t just “do” art — she embodies it. I met with Li while she worked on the top floor of the Black Family Visual
Arts Center, alone for the afternoon in an empty studio. All the lights had been shut off except for what looked like a drawing of a leafy plant glowing from a projector on the wall. When I walked in, Li was standing in front of an enormous canvas, which was blank besides some lines of red leaves. For Li, creativity is a constant endeavor; there is a thin line between art and life. “Anything can inspire me,” she said. “I found flowers in the trash this one day, and I took them out and [realized] that they were beautiful flowers. That somehow led to this whole fascination with flora [in my work].”
For her senior seminar, Li said she is still contemplating what she hopes to convey through her finished work, but some ideas are taking shape. “We had an outside evaluator come in last term who described my paintings as ‘haptic,’” Li said, which made sense. As she described her projects, I couldn’t help but visualize her pieces in a way that made them seem visceral, almost tactile — colorful feminine figures melding and blending with nature, flowers pressed and layered over arrangements of photographs, landscapes drawn from the lines and curves in a friend’s portrait. “I’m trying to explore and show the female form without the social stigma that we put on it — being overly sexualized or serving a certain purpose,” she explained. The way Li characterized her work reminded me of the late Francesca Woodman’s conceptually feminist, experimental self-portraits, with their emphasis on sensuality and marked departures from traditional depictions of the feminine body. Li notes how it’s important to appreciate the female form as a wonder of nature in itself, as something beautiful. Still, she said she wanted her audience to feel free to create their own interpretations. “I don’t believe that there’s anything to ‘get’ about art,” Li said. “Often what we gain from art is really just a feeling.” Kealy Brown ’19 is working on a project that will combine themes from her two majors: studio art and biological anthropology. “The medium I’m using is photography, and one of the biggest projects I’m working on right now has to do with a book on skulls and connecting my two majors — anthropology and studio art,” Brown said. “It goes into how, on an [anthropological] level, you figure out if [the skull] is female or male, and then what age the skull is.” Her exploration of the subject was prompted by reflections during a human osteology class, where she had the chance to look at real human bones. “[The bones] piqued my interest in: ‘Should we be looking at these bones? What gives us the right?’” Her book will feature medically-
phtographed skulls, with anthropological nomenclature for identification. Brown has also used photography as a medium to explore the relationship between life and death in her past works. For SART 75, “Photography III,” she said she created a series of nighttime landscapes. The photographs communicated a sense of a journey through time. “It was a self-reflection of what I was going through at the time,” Brown said. “My grandpa had just passed away, so it was kind of a way to get through that grieving process.” Raleigh Nesbitt ’19 was crowned winner of Dartmouth Idol last month. In addition to being a musician, Nesbitt is also a visual artist and studio art major. When I run into her on campus, she’s invariably carrying a guitar case or a giant sketchpad. The latter, she notes, is an inextricable part of her artistic process. “I guess it just challenges the physical status role of how an artist is supposed to work in a studio, with paint or with whatever expensive material you have,” Nesbitt said. Nesbitt wants to challenge this status quo. For her senior project, she will be working with colored pencil. “[Painting] just felt very impersonal,” Nesbitt said of this decision. “But I loved the colors that I could get with paint, so I was thinking, ‘How can I have this vibrancy, and speak in this language of color, but use pencil?’” As an artist who will draw on themes of freedom and liberation for her senior project, she emphasized a newfound harmony between materiality and the conceptual nature of her work. Working in a medium that is affordable and accessible — not to mention portable — provides its own deliverance from rigid guidelines and expectations, she said. “I think that being free in my creative process conceptually affects the way that I think about and illustrate what I think about freedom and liberation,” Nesbitt said. Li is a former member of The Dartmouth Senior Staff.
TTLG: Empty Your Cup — The Beauty of Being a Beginner
MIRR OR //7
TTLG
By Angela Zhang
Think about a recent conversation you had that was particularly meaningful. Maybe it made you reevaluate your own perspectives or reflect on your personal values. Maybe it was at 1 a.m. with your roommates over Domino’s buffalo wings, or with a mentor or with a friend from home. Mine was with an eight-year-old on a Caribbean cruise. Said eight-yearold was passing my friends and I when he suddenly stopped us and asked suspiciously, “Hey. What do you guys do at night time?” Being the early 20-somethings that we were, we answered truthfully, “We’re going to play shuffleboard. Being an adult is pretty boring.” In an accusing tone, he objected, “But, you’re not adults.” He pointed at one of us, “You’re 14.” He pointed at another, “You’re 16.” He pointed at our third friend, “You’re 20.” And then he pointed at me, “You’re 12.” With my ego slightly bruised, I replied, “That’s not true. I’m 13 going on 14.” “No, you’re 12.” His decision was final. I was 12. I thought about this for an unnecessarily long time. Do I really still have a baby face? That kid could not have been taller than four feet; there was no logical way he thought I was only four years older than him. But that’s the beauty of being a kid. Step-by-step logic and linear thinking have yet to be ingrained into us. We have no concept of social constructs, like what it means to be “young” or “an adult.” We haven’t been socialized with norms, constraints and biases yet, so we aren’t constrained to operate within them. This reminded me of a Zen parable: A senior student, knowledgeable and experienced, comes to a famous Zen master to ask for instruction. The master begins to discuss several tenets of Buddhism, but the student interjects with opinions and says, “Oh, I already know that.” The master then invites the student to have tea. When the tea is ready, the master pours the tea into the teacup, filling it to the brim and continuing to pour until it overflows and spills onto the table. The student exclaims, “Stop! You can’t pour tea into a full cup.” The master replies, “Then return to me when your cup is empty.”
We enter Dartmouth with empty cups and open minds, easily impressionable and eager to learn. Slowly, we pick up the lingo, become familiar and begin to build a box around ourselves out of bricks of well-known identifiers: Class year. Affiliation. Sports teams. Social groups. Extracurriculars. We define ourselves in ways that can leave little room for exploration. Our cups get filled. I remember that when I was a freshman, the upperclassmen whom I considered mentors talked about “being jaded.” I always thought to myself, “There’s no way that’ll be me.” Fast forward a couple of years (and many consecutive on-terms) to my junior fall and, lo and behold, I felt jaded and burnt out. I was stifled by the repetition of on-nights that seemed to blur together, cynical about Greek life, bitter about my friends’ experiences with sexual assault as well as my own, tired from self-imposed pressure to be “on” all the time, stagnant in my own routine and trapped in the middle of the woods. I felt stuck emotionally, as though my identity at Dartmouth had become solidified into a presentation of myself to others that no longer matched how I viewed myself and the ways I had changed and grown. I tried to escape by going off campus every weekend. I would dread returning. One of the bright spots of that term was taking ENGS 12: “Design Thinking,” which required me to overcome the apprehension of trying a class that was very different from previous courses I had taken. It was a lot of “firsts” for me. For instance, it was the first time I had used Adobe Photoshop. It was also, unsurprisingly, the first time I had nearly pulled an all-nighter to build a foam rollercoaster. Design thinking — a reiterative process that is centered on user needs and focused on creative problem solving through empathy, user research and rapid prototyping — was a foreign concept up until that point. But, within the first week, I decided to pursue Dartmouth’s human-centered design minor. So much new information was thrown at me, but many of the principles we learned and practiced easily transcended the class and filtered into my own life. I found myself naturally beginning to reframe “failures”
as opportunities for growth — the earlier I failed, the faster I could improve. The observational nature of user research translated into mindfulness in my own day-to-day existence. Throughout the term, we kept journal entries of “the beautiful” and “the unexpected.” Even small moments carried weight, like finding exactly what I needed at Jo-Ann Fabric or holding hands on the Green during the farmer’s market. One of my favorite lectures touched on “the beginner’s mindset” in the design process. I truly did feel like a beginner in this class. But the message of the lecture was to hold onto that fresh lens, even after becoming more experienced. It emphasized listening, deferring judgment, curiosity and playing the “Why?” game that kids do to annoy their parents. I realized that being a beginner meant acknowledging and shedding the cognitive biases, habits, preconceptions and complacency that restricted me. It was freeing. Fast forward to now: senior spring. I’m in my second and final term of the Senior Design Challenge, a two-term capstone experience that was created for seniors to use everything they’ve ever learned, human-centered design-related or otherwise, to work with a team to help partner organizations (or “clients”) create solutions for their challenges or problems. Most of our partners are from the local community in the Upper Valley and focus on promoting health and wellness and empowering their target populations. Although the Upper Valley is racially homogenous, it is socioeconomically diverse, creating many opportunities for community engagement and social impact. All we have to do is look beyond our bubble to see the exciting work within these organizations and be reminded of how important and unique the community is around and beyond our campus. It initially (and still does) feel like a daunting task. There’s a constant level of ambiguity that each team navigates as it works to design something that four, eight, 12 weeks ago was entirely unfamiliar. But even that, as uncomfortable as it may sometimes be, is exciting. My peers and I, as complete novices, have the opportunity to learn and discover implicit needs and
have the freedom to brainstorm wild ideas and break away from established, institutional status quos. But as we become more familiar and experienced on our projects, we continue to integrate a beginner’s mindset by opening ourselves up to the gift of constructive feedback and offering fresh perspectives. I am incredibly lucky and grateful to have these peers, who, at the end of the day, make the Senior Design Challenge what it is to me. I hope that, wherever I end up in the future, I can find — and if not find, cultivate — a similar environment where I can share moments of being ridiculously weird, and where everyone supports and pushes each other’s creative boundaries without judgment. I know this sounds like a huge plug, but I promise I am not being endorsed by any entity other than my own sentimentality. From these experiences, both with and beyond human-centered design, I’ve learned to see Dartmouth with fresh eyes again. Sure, it’s been a while since I matriculated. Heorot highlighter party is long behind me. But, I feel just as present as I did four years ago when I toured
campus and stood in the middle of the Green staring at the lavender face of the Baker Tower clock. I try to stretch out and savor every moment with my friends. I enjoy the time I have alone to sit by the window at 3 a.m. and listen to the rain. Graduation is exciting. It’s sad. It’s scary. The way that I feel about graduating shifts on an hourly basis. This place has given me so many memories, many that I want to preserve and replay forever. Sometimes when I’m coming home from the library late at night, I’ll stand on the Green and stare at Baker Tower and let them wash over me. The “real world” (we say it so ominously) and the future is full of the unknown. After being filled with an endless stream of information for four years, it’s difficult to just “not know.” But not knowing leaves room for curiosity and moments of creation. As Sōtō Zen monk Shunryū Suzuki noted, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.” We’re all going to be beginners out there, and we have a long way to grow. Just remember to keep emptying your cup.
COURTESY OF ANGELA ZHANG
8// MIRR OR
From the Ground Up PHOTO
By Adrian Russian