Leslie Jennings '96 realizes there's not much white space in her daily planner book.
"I'm not even going to show you my 'Day by Day,' " she said smiling. "It's horrific."
She is just too busy.
"I'm great at planning my time, but I don't remember the little things like it takes you a half an hour to get from where you are to where you're going," she added. "You can't go from a seven-to-eight meeting, and then an eight-to-nine meeting. I forget eating sometimes."
This summer, the 20-year-old Film Studies and Economics major has scheduled time to direct the Summerphonics a capella group, co-chair the Programming Board, organize Sophomore Family Weekend, give College tours and work as a Collis Center facilities manager.
"This isn't how I envisioned my summer being. I wanted to sit out on the Green under a tree and read Shakespeare, but I keep running around too much," she said.
Rehearsals etc.
Much of Jennings' time is devoted to rehearsal and performance with the Summer-phonics, composed of members of the Dartmouth Dodecaphonics who are on campus this term as well as other singers from the Class of 1996.
But the stress and the strain do not prohibit Jennings from having fun.
"I take directing and being at the head of things very seriously, and so I have to stress when I'm out there, making sure we all sound right and we're all together," she said. "But I'm still having fun. I'm going to get out there and sing 'Galileo' and it's going to be so much fun."
A long-time passion for singing led to Jennings' involvement with campus singing groups as early as her freshman fall.
After taking lessons in junior high school and high school, Jennings sang with both the Chamber Singer and the Dodecs her first term at Dartmouth. She later decided to stop singing with the Chamber Singers because of time constraints.
"It was an incredible experience my freshman fall, because right after that the Dodecs went to Mexico to Club Med, and I automatically had these wonderful friends who I love," she said.
Other responsibilities
"I live here," Jennings said, perched in a soft armchair in the Collis study room.
A Programming Board member walks by with a stack of brightly colored posters in his hand and pauses to ask Jennings' approval.
Whether behind the information desk or upstairs in the Programming Board office, much of Jennings' involvement with campus activities centers around the campus center.
Jennings joined Programming Board during her first term and has been a member ever since.
"We do so many other things, like fun speakers and public awareness for the campus, which I like," she said.
Part of Jennings' responsibility as co-chair this summer is to reformulate the Programming Board's entire budget.
Jennings also schedules 1996 Class Council meetings into her weekly routine. Her involvement with the organization of Sophomore Family Weekend is an offshoot of her membership on the council. "Sophomore Family Weekend is taking a lot of time. I can't believe they're going to be here in a week," she said.
Campus tours
On some mornings you can see Jennings walking backwards, motioning with her hands and speaking with tour groups.
Jennings said she enjoys giving campus tours because it allows her to use her experience in many areas of the College community to share her unique view of that community.
"The one thing I try to stress on my tours a lot is the Dartmouth community, and how it isn't just students here taking classes; but students doing things, and learning from each other, and then having access to these wonderful professors and faculty members," she said. "It's a sense that we're not just here to learn what's in the books or what a professor lectures."
But Jennings, who grew up in Virginia, said she did not always want to go to a small, rural college. She said she had always taken it for granted that she would attend a school in her home state.
"Then I came here, and my dad and I were walking from the Hanover Inn across the Green and he stopped me in the middle of the street," she said. "Of course I was a junior in high school, and I was horrified, but he turned to me and said 'Leslie, this is what a college campus looks like.' "
"And it is," she added.
Jennings' initial positive feeling about Dartmouth have evolved into a deeper attachment. "I've just realized from doing it how strong my feelings are for Dartmouth, and every time I go out, I want to sell it more and more," she said.
New responsibilities
At the beginning of Summer term, Jennings had to deal with new responsibilities and also the adjustment of being back on campus after a term studying and traveling in Europe.
After going on the Italian Language Study Abroad program, Jennings decided to do her documentary for her summer film class on language study at the College.
Jennings, after the program, spent two weeks exploring Eastern Europe by herself -- traveling through the Czech Republic, Germany and Hungary.
"I did want to do it, and I wanted to do it for maybe bad reasons. I knew it would be scary. I wanted to be able to come back and say 'I traveled through Eastern Europe alone, as a woman,' in this time of changes throughout the world in the role of women," she said.
Jennings said her decision to make the trip on her own was based partly on a desire for an independent, unique viewpoint of the places she would see.
"It was an experience, and I'm glad I did it, and so now I felt like when I came back to Dartmouth, that I could deal with anything," she said.
The trip also gave her direction for the future, Jennings said.
"I have the travel bug now. It's been an incentive for me to look for jobs and career options that do involve travel and international work," she added.
Jennings will take her leave term in the fall and hopes to work for a media consulting firm in Washington, D.C., but is unsure about her career path.
"Maybe I don't have to figure it out, maybe I can change my job a million times," she said, "but I'd kind of like to have some direction by the time I get out [of college], an idea of what's going to make me happy."
