At dusk on Saturday, I lay on my quilted duvet, listening to the droning of my fan and infrequent conversations on the road below my window. Last week, I endured the kind of stress that numbs you, that makes it hard to believe the stressors are trivial. But I made it to the weekend, to a moment of stillness in the constant turmoil of the Dartmouth bubble.
I don’t intend to always make my editor’s notes about this feeling — the ennui I’ve been reading about in Emile Zola novels. But this campus is conducive to an elusive sort of happiness, always manifesting as bitterness on a page. Bright vignettes of my time here — dancing in the rain with friends or a rainbow arcing boldly behind Reed Hall — are eclipsed by a persistent disillusionment with this institution and its imprint on us all.
Maybe naively, I subscribe to two platitudes: that everything happens for a reason and that one can always make the best of a bad situation. I hope that being at Dartmouth did, in fact, happen for a reason. The situation is that I fundamentally disagree with a culture that I’ve assimilated into, and at times, thrived in. Dartmouth institutions that promote belonging and sociability also promote homogeny and complacency. How to make the best of it? I’m still figuring that part out. With so few opportunities for reflection, for stillness, the best I can do is stare at the discoloration on my ceiling until the room is dark.
Last Monday, Hanover lost power on one of its warmest days this term. In my first class, the lights flickered and the projector went dark. The lecture proceeded as usual, but my lunch plans afterwards were foiled; Collis doesn’t have a backup generator. Still, the outage was a welcome interruption, spurring a walk down Main Street where I pet a shop owner’s dog. Within the hour, I was laughing in a West Lebanon restaurant with two of my best friends, putting extra chili oil on veggie dumplings despite the day’s thick heat. On the walk back from A-Lot, we spoke about the red paint — “blood” — against the sterile white facade of Dartmouth Hall.
That is to say, joy and gravity, serene smiles and white hot anger, alternately crash against the shore of campus life. We always make it through the week or find ways to step back, whether it be an impromptu drive or 30 minutes of virtual silence in a dorm room. But it’s never perfect, no matter how often Dartmouth students attempt to manufacture the picturesque moments. I wonder if we should confront the blackouts rather than trying to beat them back with fickle, fleeting sunshine.
This week in Mirror, our writers consider campus cultures — our own and others — as students everywhere reach the end of their terms. One writer reflects on attending her brother’s graduation as her own comes just around the corner. Two writers return for their weekly column, “Freak of the Week,” to provide advice on end-of-term matches.
Lately, I’ve been grappling with what being a Dartmouth student means. Our culture is shaped from the top-down: We all arrive here as impressionable, vague forms slotted into clay extruders – clubs, Greek Houses and academic departments. All of these, all of us, are encompassed by an institution with an administration and an agenda, which has been increasingly criticized for its relationship with its students and the world — rightfully so.
Ennui is inevitable when institutional neutrality represses dissent and progress, politically and culturally. As much as our culture may reflect these attitudes, it is more susceptible to our beliefs and our actions as students. Ultimately, we look to one another each day to be heard, acknowledged and even disagreed with. In these cycles of work and burnout, of going out and staying in, remind yourself of where you are and what you believe in, Mirror. We’re capable of doing more than just getting by.
