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(10/25/18 6:05am)
This weekend, I spent some time knocking on doors in Hanover as part of a get-out-the-vote effort. Door-knocking in a college town has its pros and cons. Pro: People are generally nice and willing to talk to random college students, especially when said college students look cold and a little miserable in the 40-degree weather. Con: Finding specific student housing apartments requires immense navigational skill, of which I have none. How can you find apartment #21B when the number “2” has fallen off the door? More cons: Lots of people do not answer their doors. Even the people who do answer don’t always want to talk once they realize the knock doesn’t come from a package delivery.
(10/09/18 6:05am)
This weekend, I returned home for 36 hours. I slept in a bed that was not a twin XL, I drove around my home town, I ate authentic Chinese food — in short, I enjoyed the comforts of home. At the same time, it didn’t really feel like “home” anymore. My childhood bedroom was given to me for a night, but it had been occupied by my sister for about two weeks, due to the presence of relatives staying over. My sister’s belongings decorated the crevices of the room I had always thought of mine. This time, I felt like a guest. My customary mug languished in a cabinet; I fumbled a bit with the new coffeemaker. I could still navigate my home town with ease, but I felt out of place at my regular nail salon. The suburban moms who usually frequent the salon gossiped about places and people whom I no longer recognized or knew much about. Thankfully, the Chinese food still tasted delicious.
(10/02/18 6:15am)
Thanks to all of those freshman year icebreakers, I can drop a few fun facts about myself at a moment’s notice: I never really learned to tell my lefts from my rights, I’m allergic to apples and bananas, and I lived with my grandparents in China for three years. One year after I was born, I flew from Boston to Shanghai, where I stayed under the care of countless relatives spread across the biggest and brightest city I’ve ever seen. Almost all of my extended family lives in China, and I love every memory I’ve made there. I have been loud and proud of my heritage for a few years, but it hasn’t always been that way. In fact, sometimes it still feels like I’m trying too hard to disassociate myself from the community that raised me.
(05/29/18 6:00am)
In less than one week, I will have officially finished my freshman year at Dartmouth. In numbers, it looked like this: nine classes, eight opinion columns written for The Dartmouth, seven rejected applications (as a caveat, two rejections came from the same place), six close friends whom I treasure dearly, five days a week (every week) when I did not get enough sleep, four dramatic emotional outbursts, three pairs of lost headphones, two embarrassing incidents featuring me dropping food and making a mess at various dining locations and one constant cycle of oscillation. I am referring to the way I swung — back and forth, up and down, forward and backward — from one extreme to another: jubilance to despair, serenity to panic, confidence to shame, pride to humility. It was truly the best of times and the worst of times.
(05/17/18 6:00am)
I want to be rich. There, I said it. I am at this school because I love the people here, I love the opportunities afforded to me here and I love the things I am learning here, but I am primarily here because I expect a high rate of return on my Ivy League education.
(05/03/18 6:15am)
I can count on one hand the number of times my parents and I have said “I love you” to each other. In Chinese culture, love is something people show through their actions; it is weird to express it with words. The action of love is not shown through hugs and kisses, either, but rather through sacrifice and diligence. It is something that I have never felt comfortable explaining.
(04/17/18 6:00am)
This past Thursday marked the start of the year’s first Dimensions of Dartmouth. Hundreds of fresh-faced prospective students descended upon the Green, many of them already committed to the College and some in the process of deciding where to spend the next four years of their lives. One of my two prospective students told me that these two days would make the decision for her; when she returned to my dorm on Thursday night, she gushed about the Dimensions show and After Dark Tours and told me that she felt like this place could be home. My other prospective student seemed a little more skeptical about the wildly enthusiastic, summer-camp vibes surrounding her. It caused me to wonder: is Dimensions truly a realistic representation of life at Dartmouth, or is it merely a marketing tool which paints this school in rather misleadingly rosy hues?
(03/06/18 5:15am)
A few weeks into winter term, I called my parents crying for the first time in my life. They were noticeably confused — I don’t cry often, but when I do, I never go to them until my tears are gone. As it was, I could not fully explain why I was so upset. My dad, a psychiatrist, immediately asked me if I had been feeling “blue.” I responded that I had. I was tired, unenthusiastic and reluctant to spend time outside of my room. I had trouble getting out of bed, not because I did not want to leave the bliss of sleep but because I did not want to face the world. Everything felt “meh;” I could hardly remember the last time I had felt anything other than malaise. My dad told me to get more sleep, see my friends more and exercise regularly. If I was still feeling this way in a week, he suggested options such as therapy or medication. I called back a few days later, happy to report that I was feeling much better. He told me that I had probably been going through a slump brought on by the winter weather or homesickness; whatever it was, he was glad for me that it had passed. He ended the phone call with a reminder that I could always talk to him about my mental state, and that was that.
(11/07/17 5:30am)
Every time I sit down to write an opinion piece for The Dartmouth, I have to wrack my brain for a topic or issue that is new, fresh and original. Most of the time, I am sorely disappointed. My ideas originate from mealtime discussions with my friends. My opinions are easily influenced by any number of well-written articles, and the concluding arguments to my pieces are hardly revolutionary. It seems that after centuries of literacy, everything that can be argued has been done. The advent of the internet has only made that more obvious: A quick Google search will bring up someone else’s pros and cons list for every opinion I’ve ever had. As I continue to write, I bury the disappointment accompanied by my unoriginality with the rest of my teenage angst, hoping that one day my brain will do me a favor and spark up something the world has never seen before. But recently I’ve begun questioning why I care about originality so much. Why is it so important that my thoughts about the world, myself and school have to be different from everyone else’s? Is originality really so valuable?
(11/03/17 4:30am)
Logically, I am aware that Orientation only lasted seven days. Realistically, it felt like seven years. By the end of it, the word “transition” did not seem like a real word anymore, and I had perfected the reflex of telling people my name, hometown and intended major. Though most of Orientation felt like a repetition of information, there was one moment that stood out with unfortunate clarity: When the coordinators asked how many of us had graduated in the top 10 percent of our high school class, we saw that most of us had been in that percentile. The gravity of that exercise didn’t hit me until a few minutes later: If so many of us had been in the top 10 percent of our high schools, obviously we couldn’t all be in the top 10 percent at Dartmouth. Of course, I promptly dismissed that realization and reasoned that I could cruise on smoothly as always, because school was something that I’d always known how to do.
(10/26/17 4:45am)
There is a collapsible, gray-and-white-striped fabric box from IKEA that sits neatly under my bed. This box has a flip top that opens to reveal all of my “going out” clothes. All of my female friends have their own versions of this box — a dresser drawer, a storage bin, a section of their closet, etc. On “going out” nights, we pull out various tops and bottoms, all baring more skin than is entirely practical for the bitingly cold nights of Hanover. Getting ready takes us anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes, complete with plenty of laughter, compliments and outfit assistance on themed nights.