Things You Lost and Never Found

By PJ Bigley | 4/15/16 5:56am

Before I came to college, I didn’t think of myself as someone who typically loses things. But some sort of switch flipped freshman year, and since then I’ve been losing things left and right (chiefly my dignity and motivation, but that’s beside the point). Some things are normal to lose in everyday college life: your backpack, computer, phone, wallet, keys, etc. But there are also some things that you lose specifically at Dartmouth and just never seem to get back.

Here’s a list of things you lost at Dartmouth and never found:


  • Concentration

  • A life outside of the library

  • Free time

  • Money

  • Privacy

  • The power to say “no” to a Foco cookie

  • Your hoverboard

  • An essay…to your computer…at 2 a.m…20 minutes before the deadline

  • Language that people outside of Dartmouth would understand (Blitz? Foco? Blobby? Flair? WTF is a ’20?)

  • Your ID (This daily occurrence is followed by the fun game of going to the card office to activate your spare ID while you look for the other one and inevitably find it in your pocket.)

  • The will to wake up early (How high school me got up at 7 a.m. every day is a mystery to college me.)

  • The sense of what “cold” actually means (FYI 40 degrees is cold, -10 degrees with wind chill is life-threatening.)

  • Obviously your fracket (but you will find a lot of friends, as people who’ve lost their frackets take to the class Facebook page and write nonsense “To the Person Who Stole My Fracket” posts)

  • Your underwear? (This is probably just me. Speaking of which, if you’re the 2014 McLaughlin underwear thief, I have some questions for you and would like to recommend some intensive therapy.)

Tags: humor, culture

PJ Bigley