Itis often said that hindsight is 20/20. In many ways that often seems true to me. Having now completed my first year at Dartmouth, as I look back, I see a litany of things that I probably should have done differently. Of course, while I can try to use this knowledge to alter my Dartmouth experience in the next three years, I will never actually get the opportunity to relive my freshman year.
So I suppose that the best thing that all of us non-freshmen can do with the insight we have accumulated is to try to share it with this year's incoming class, the class of 1999, with the hope that it will in some way better their time here. Now certainly I do not purport to be an authority on what makes for an enjoyable and worthwhile time at Dartmouth, but I do feel there are a few small suggestions I can make.
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Meet with and get to know professors. I'm sure this is onenearly every freshman has heard from nearly every upperclass student and administrator. Perhaps the frequency with which it is repeated stems from the wisdom of the statement. Before I enrolled last year one upperclass student told me, "professors are just a lot of really cool people who have done a lot of really cool things." I couldn't agree more. Most of the professors here have traveled all around the world, written books and attended prestigious conferences. They are a wealth of information all too many students fail to tap. To live on this campus for four years and never speak to your professors outside of the classroom would be equivalent to sitting in a library for four years and never opening a book.
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Reserve judgment. In any community the size of Dartmouth it is inevitable that rumors will swirl and stereotypes will be prevalent. A perfect example of this is the Greek system. All too often labels are attached to specific houses and sweeping generalizations, both positive and negative, are made regarding the entire system. It is important that each individual forms for himself an opinion regarding the Greek system as well as other issues at Dartmouth. This is not to say the opinions of others should be considered. Rather, new students need to take into account everything they hear and formulate their own opinion.
Following from this comes a corollary point. When freshmen hear statements and judgments being made, they need to consider the source of the statement. Be it a comment from a journalistic source, the administration or simply another student, consider where it is coming from. This is not to say one should be cynical and trust nothing, but rather the source of the opinion may be as telling as the opinion itself.
- If a decision is made that you are unhappy with, never just accept it. It is our duty as Dartmouth students to follow and respect the decisions made by the administration whether we like or agree with them. At the same time, however, we do have the right to voice our opinions, and it is surprising the progress that can be made at times.
Through my own personal experience I found both Dean of the College Lee Pelton and Freshman Dean Peter Goldsmith, among others, to be willing to listen and consider alternatives when their proposal to create freshman dorms was met with considerable resistance. In the end the idea of freshman dorms was dropped.
Of course protests will not be so successful in all cases. Yet, even then there is a value in speaking one's mind. Consider the recent efforts by numerous students to protest Playboy Magazine's visit to Dartmouth. While Playboy did come, and their most recent issue does contain photographs of Dartmouth women, the simple act of voicing their opinions allowed several Dartmouth students to spur on debate.
Certainly there are many aspects of what determines a "positive Dartmouth experience."
The above advice hardly guarantees one will feel satisfied upon leaving this place. However, I do feel it can help enrich what are supposed to be the "best years of your life".
