Competition is rampant at Dartmouth, and if someone tells you otherwise, he is probably leading you astray. High-school applicants to the College don't merely fill out a few forms, write a few standardized test scores on a piece of paper and check a few miscellaneous boxes. Most fight tooth and nail for their spots.
And as we all know, about 25 percent of those same recommendation-begging, resume stretching, math club participating, varsity sport playing, veterinary assisting, candy-striping, O.J. Simpson trial-watching valedictorians make Dartmouth's final cut.
But now we're all here. Has anything changed? Let's take a closer look, using some examples with which we can all identify.
How many times have you heard two people on this campus comparing how much alcohol they consumed on a Friday night.
One student will start off by saying, "Whoa, last ni ght was crazy. I must have at least 13 or 14 beers. I have no clue how the heck I got home."
In response you'll likely hear, "You think you had it bad, I had about seven mixed drinks at Alpha Nu Mu, played four or five games of line at Sigma Cow Tau and funneled a huge amount of Everclear on my way home to Butterfield."
Not to be outdone, you might get, " Lemme tell you about my night -- if I can remember any of it. I think I started off by drinking a pint of Jeff Daniels (too cheap to buy name-brand Jack Daniels), and I then did a circuit around frat row, drinking a mung, ash-filled beer at every house. You see this scar, that's from hurdlin' over three Safety and Security cars while I was streaking the Green tied to an anvil. And I still hooked."
But that's not all folks. What about those students comparing how much caffeine they had in order to tool for a dreaded midterm. You might hear a chorus of "Oh my god, I was up all night studying. I had a six-pack of Coke, 3 cups of coffee, a Harry's Flatbed Special and a bottle of Jolt."
In response, you might hear, "You think that's bad. I had a 24 pack of Crystal Pepsi, a box of Ho-Ho's and a couple of packets of Vivarin Plus."
And, don't forget the "I pried my eyes open with a couple of rusted out sewing pins while listening to my new Mega-memory tapes on my Macintosh's CD-ROM. Then I smoked at least 11 unfiltered cigarettes while taking swigs of three-day-old Yoo Hoo. You see my face -- five gargantuan pimples, count 'em five -- now that's a heck of an accomplishment."
And if you're not part of the last-minute crammers club of Dartmouth, maybe you qualify as a slacker. Have you ever witnessed this competitive conversation: "I spent no more than 20 minutes writing that 15 page History paper. Heck, I did it in between commercials to Beavis and Butthead. I must have used the word fartknocker at least 15 times in each body paragraph."
But, not to be topped, his roommate retorts: "Dude, you think you blew it off. My girlfriend was up from Long Island, and I must have spent all of 10 minutes makin' up inane facts about Columbus' repressed boyhood days. In fact, it barely came out to be two pages, quadruple-spaced with size 20 New York font.
But you can't forget the student who says, "Well at least you guys read the assignment. I only had a chance to look it over when I got to history class this morning. I just pounded out a few pornographic haikus on my desktop and blitzed the paper to the prof, under the heading "Here you go buddy."
But my favorite form of competition comes from those ultimate mega-slackers, both of whom compare their high scores on an all-new version of Tetris or Shufflepuck Cafe.
Each ardently trying to knock the other person off the high score list while bragging, "You think getting an E is bad. I just got an E citation in Rocks. The prof wrote on my record that I couldn't have done any worse if I had tried. In fact, he sent a newsbrief home to all the local papers, citing me for truancy, disrespect and immaturity. My family just disinherited me and I'm living in a van down by the river. The van doesn't even have a keg-o-lator."
Perhaps you're just one of those people who increases the weight on the Nautilus machine after you finish your sets just to make sure that next person knows what he has to compete against. The fact remains that all of us have a competitive instinct in some form or other.
Just in case you don't believe this competitive phenomenon exists at Dartmouth, do the following. Walk up to somebody and tell him you woke up late last Saturday, at around 1:30 p.m. You might hear within seconds. "1:30 p.m., you talk about waking up early. Did you have a midterm to study for? I barely finished playing pong at Sigma Tau Xi at 1:30 p.m. That's when I started playing foos."
Maybe then you'll believe the veracity of my words.
