The Mirror Orientation Issue 2014

9.10.2014

MIR ROR

OVERHEARDS| 2

14F COURSE GUIDE| 2

IN NEED OF ORIENTING| 3

TRIPS PHOTO ESSAY| 4 TRACY WANG // THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

2// MIRROR

EDITOR’S NOTE

Oh, the Classes You’ll Take This 14F story

B y MARY LIZA HARTONG

“Oh, the classes I’ll take!” you’ll say as you inspect the term’s course list. You picture yourself raising your hand with pride, answering questions even seniors in your class can’t fathom. Emblazoned with A’s and citations, your first report card from Dartmouth will be tacked to your fridge at home. But before you even reach that point, you must brave Banner Student and navigate the murky waters of registering for courses. My advice — take one class you know you’ll love, one that will fulfill a distributive requirement and one that is completely random. Beware the rumored “layup” class, for one man’s layup is another man’s D+. Finally, tell yourself it’s okay if you don’t have a 4.0 in your first term of college. You will get there. Or maybe you won’t, and that’s okay, too. Most importantly, take risks, tear it up and know that you’ll figure it out along the way. Here are some of my picks for top freshman fall classes.

EARS 06: Environmental Change (At the 11 hour)

Courtesy of Erin Landau

My first week at Dartmouth I climbed into a washing machine, my best friend from high school was picked up by Safety and Security, a kid pooped in my hall’s shower and I was sexiled for 24 hours. Thus began orientation, some of the craziest, strangest and most fun days of my life thus far. Welcome to the fray, Class of 2018.

My name is Erin Landau, and I edit the Mirror, The Dartmouth’s weekly cultural insert featuring stories ranging from serious critiques of campus issues to hilarious satires of college clichés. This particular issue features a little bit of both. Reflections from a senior staff member, helpful class tips and a Trips photo essay. I hope you’ll find these pieces somewhat useful as you navigate your new home for the first time.

As a doe-eyed freshman, it’s easy to feel lost, confused and overwhelmed by the sheer number of things you’re supposed to do in those precious days leading up to your first college course.

My advice is to remain as calm as possible.

Try to make it to a few events, but don’t beat yourself up if you miss a department open house for a KAF run with your floor mates.

Take the time to go outside. You’ll savor those moments while pulling an all-nighter in Baker-Berry and when leaving your room in below-freezing weather doesn’t seem possible. Most importantly, soak it all in — you’ll never experience this much freedom, anticipation, anxiety and excitement ever again.

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MIRROR R MIRROR EDITOR ERIN LANDAU

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF LINDSAY ELLIS PUBLISHER CARLA LARIN

LING 01: Introductor y Linguistics (At the 12 hour)

For those of you looking for one of those so-big-I-can-arrive-20-minuteslate-with-a-poptart-hanging-out-of-mymouth classes, this course is for you.

Find your 10 best friends and sign on up. Because this is a big class and one that tackles the pesky science distrib, plenty of students go into it thinking, “Science is boring. I’d rather online shop.” However, all you naysayers will soon find yourselves engrossed as you learn what global warming really is, how convection ovens work and how many ice cubes you’d have to carr y up a glacier to replace a melting ice cap (hint: a lot). Lectures are recorded and placed online for those who miss class or wish to refresh their memor y — but don’t use this as an excuse to skip.

Whether you’re a science person or not, I guarantee you’ll learn at least one useful factoid to impress your future in-laws.

HIST 25.02: The United States and the World, 1865-1945 (At the 11 hour) Most of us could explain what happened during the Civil War and name a few major World War II battles, but what about Reconstruction, the rise of populism and the Scopes Monkey Trial? This course explores a period of American histor y that we all wanted to cover in APUSH but didn’t have time for, or were too busy writing novels in blue books to remember. Forget all the memorization you did in high school and indulge in a histor y course simply for the fun of it — I know it sounds fishy, but trust me, I’m a junior. Expect a lecture style class with about 30 people, exams and most likely a paper or two.

WGST 10: Sex, Gender and Society (Multiple sections offered at the 9L, 12 and 2A hours) This is not your average introductor y course. Don’t worr y about anxiously scanning throngs of unruly students in a lecture hall to locate your tripee — you will find yourself in a class with about 20 people. You have most likely never met any of them because they will come from all corners of campus.

You will sit among rowers, singers, budding politicians and burn outs, some of whom will already be equipped with feminist jargon like “agency” and “mutuality,” and others who won’t know a woman from a wombat. But you don’t have to be a woman to take this course, and you don’t have to be a feminist. The class is run like a typical English class, incorporating readings, discussions, films and pr esentations. Final projects may replace exams and are open ended so that you can study topics that interest you. The course may seem out of your comfort zone, but it’s worth it.

If logic and language had a baby, it would be this course, a study of language, grammar, speaking and so much more — it appeals to both novel readers and MENSA members. After watching videos, completing worksheets and attending lectures with 50 to 75 of your classmates, you will finally understand why your Uncle Jerr y says “pop” instead of “soda” and why it’s okay to use “like” as a filler. Most people have never taken a linguistics class — or cannot even define linguistics — so this course is a must for the intellectually curious. For those whose anathema is math, consider taking this course to fulfill your QDS distrib. You may just find you want to stick around and become a linguistics major, and don’t forget to mind your p’s and q’s.

THEA 10.07: The Sound of Silence: A Chekhov Writing Workshop (cross-listed with COCO 04.02 and RUSS 38.01) (Class time to be arranged) Public speaking is the number one reported fear in America, so it comes as no surprise that many Dartmouth students would rather run 118 laps around a bonfire than speak onstage. However, this class is more than just a theater course. It focuses on the plays of Chekhov and film adaptations, culminating in students writing and reading their own Chekhovesque plays. Still wor ried? Don’t be, because these classes tend to have fewer than 20 people and operate on the it’s-okayif-you’ve-never-acted-before principle. You may not immediately be a Chekhov or a Clooney, but you’re sure to discover your budding artistic potential.

EXECUTIVE EDITORS STEPHANIE MCFEETERS MICHAEL RIORDAN

Townie: When I think of the devil, I see Ronald Reagan’s face.

Blitz your overheards to mirror@thedartmouth.com!

’18 waiting at Ma Thayer’s: If I get fries, can I still get food here?

’15: I’m signed up for Painting 1, but the professor is supposed to be really hard, so I’m switching to orgo.

’17 trip leader: Twerking will keep your butt warm.

’15: Are you an ’18? ’18: No. I’m a freshman, but I’m 21.

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ALWAYS IN NEED OF ORIENTING

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COLUMN By Sara Kassir SHMOBS

We see you, freshmen, with your floormates and new friends.

SALMON

’18s, your mere existence makes me feel old. And with that feeling comes the compulsion to convey something that I, like any old person, will preface by saying that you will only really understand it when you, too, are old. It’s cyclic and ironic — and a little sad, to be honest — but bear with me.

Orientation is defined as “the determination of the relative position of something or someone (especially oneself).” Dartmouth arranges for you to go through this process exactly once before you embark on your freshman year. My advice to you is that once is not enough. I wish someone had told me early on that it is necessar y to orient yourself again, repeatedly.

My high school English teacher made us write letters to ourselves on the last day of senior year, detailing what our hopes, dreams and fears were for college. She promised that she would mail them to us a year later so that we could reflect on our progress. The exercise was incredibly clichéd, and I never even opened mine — until a few months ago, when I found it during one of the frenzied unpack/ repack sessions that follows an off-term.

Reading the letter three years later probably had a far more complicated impact than my teacher intended. Seeing what I wanted for myself in college at 17 inevitably made me compare it to what I have achieved at 21 — and the lists are different. It was hard not to

read the discrepancies as bygones or failures.

I never pushed myself to do an extracurricular far outside my comfort zone, I fell out of touch with many of my high school friends and my pet cat of 11 years died 10 months after the letter’s date. It wasn’t just an exercise in tracking progress — it was cold, hard proof of how much I have changed at Dartmouth, maybe even because of Dartmouth.

Excuse the outrageously extended nature of this metaphor, but reading that letter was one of many orientations I have had since freshman fall. It made me consider if I liked the ways I had changed, and if I didn’t, how I could fix them. In no way am I saying that it made me regret anything about the three incredible years I’ve had at the College so far.

But the experience did make me think about my aims and purpose and “relative position” both on this campus and, since I’m apparently graduating in a year, in life.

Too philosophical for your first week of college? I get that, and I probably wouldn’t have bought into it during my post-Trips high either. I know what orientation is about, and I sincerely hope that you all embrace it.

The feeling of newness is irreplaceable. The freedom that comes with walking around in shmobs of people you met 10 minutes ago determined to find your best friend cannot be replicated. The strong desire to actually start college-level classes won’t come back.

Ride the high, because almost ever yone I know would kill to be back in your place.

I speak from nothing more than experience, and I think the reason I believe constant orientation is so important is because I never really engaged in it during my first two years at Dartmouth. My freshman year, I was beyond caught up in how fun and collegiate ever ything felt. My sophomore year was about navigating a social scene that I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be a part of. I had minimal concept of an identity outside the context of campus, and while that was okay, I think it would have made things easier if I had taken the time to recalibrate once in awhile. That’s why opening the letter was so strange for me.

The longer you put it off, the harder it is to remember who you were when you wrote it.

Terms abroad, falling outs with friends, exciting internship offers, summers off, bad breakups, family events, conversations with someone you miss, bad grades you know you deser ved and good grades you know you deser ved — all chances to reorient yourself.

Don’t get so lost in self-reflection and feelings that you forget to live in the moment, and don’t focus so much on the future that your life becomes a series of countdowns. All I can say, Class of 2018, is I hope you decide to take opportunities for orientation when you need them.

Worst class ever, welcome home.

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Mirror Design Open House 5-7 p.m. Sept. 13 We are located on the second floor of Robinson Hall.

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We hereby decree it the color of the season. Shorts, shirts, socks — doesn’t matter.

SENIOR NOSTALGIA We can’t be the only ones who were misty-eyed during the Lodj Croo show, right?

SHAKE IT OFF It’s good advice, T-Swift, for freshman fall. The fakers will fake, the heatbreakers will break.

KAF Is it coming back? Is it gone? Will it leave?

Stay tuned.

OPEN HOUSES

4// MIRROR

TRIPS

Courtesy of Danny Berthe

Trip D48, a hiking four trip, poses for a family portrait atop Mt. Moosilauke with a pink flamingo.

Courtesy of Xinwei Jiang

The tip of a canoe peeks out against a pristine horizon near Hinman Cabin, where Trip E20 was based.

Courtesy of May Nguyen

Life jacket clad members of Trip F192, the Magalloway canoe trip, link up for a photo on Umbagog Lake on Aug. 31.

DOC First-Year Trips

Courtesy of Danny Berthe

Sam Carey ’18 gazes into the distance from his perch on the Appalachian Trail.

Courtesy of Kendall Calcano

Two members of Trip B192, a canoeing trip, jump into the Magalloway River on Aug. 27 as friends watch from above.

Courtesy of Danny Berthe

Cairns mark the trail atop Mt. Moosilauke, the final summit of a 24-mile hike that includes North and South Kinsman Mountains.

Courtesy of Danny Berthe

Stars twinkle above the Beaver Creek Shelter on the Appalachian Trail.