Staring wholly uninspired at a blank Microsoft Word screen is a writer's most dreaded nightmare. After spending seven months away from Planet Dartmouth, how could I have absolutely nothing to say?
What happened to the amazing world perspective I took away from Rome? What happened to the electricity that ran through my body when I walked down the cobblestone streets of Florence? Where could my outrage and despair at the plight of low-income families in New York City have escaped to?
I know, I know. Somehow, my memories and lessons learned got locked away in the photo album, smashed between photos of Vatican City, tucked under pictures of Sweden and intermingled with my sister's seventeenth birthday. Even opening the album does not force those sometimes eye-opening and often heart-warming experiences to jump back into my beleaguered brain.
Indeed, in the midst of a snowy April, I find myself once again perspectiveless and stressed out in my Dartmouth world, where it seems to matter more that the Unabomber knew an anthropology professor here than the fact that the Unabomber has been caught or that in a 18 year period he wreaked havoc and despair across our nation.
I find myself sucked back into cyber-obsession, where my novel but good intentions to use the telephone are undermined by my pathetic penchant for keeping my computer on from the moment I wake up in the morning until the moment I go to sleep (and stopping at every computer station I pass). Indeed, as bizarre as it may seem, I have fallen out of the habit of turning on the lights in my room before turning on the computer.
Somewhat unwillingly thrust back into this enigma called Dartmouth, I struggle to regain a perspective that reaches beyond campus politics to outside domestic and world politics where physician-assisted suicide has just become legal in New York State and North Korea is violating the conditions of its military truce. I strive to place the first three years of my Dartmouth experience into a viable context, a coherent continuum, one that validates my life on campus and yet prepares me for the great wide open.
Unfortunately, I am caught in limbo. The security of my Dartmouth blanket has allowed me to become a little more complacent about the rest of the world. And yet, the lessons I learned in the seven months I was gone refuse to allow me the peace to re-enter Dartmouth Life unscathed. How much more frustrating can it be than to return to campus feeling vitally refreshed, only to have your life turned upside down by routines you used to do in your sleep? Sure, now that I can navigate through two sprawling metropolises, all I have to figure out is how to get my class syllabus off Netscape.
Daily, I comb the campus wondering if I am the only lost soul in this post-leave-term, D-Plan-esque adjustment period (that level of hell that Dante surely must have overlooked). And yet, amidst the turmoil I have found that one aspect of life has ironically remained constant: friendship. A long run with a good friend, drinking a beer with two people you have not seen in a year (sorry, underclassmen) or a bonding session slumber-party style is enough for anyone to be convinced.
Even through the adversity of returning to campus, the realization that friendship is one of the most important Dartmouth offerings simply reaffirms the theme that arises over and over, both in our daily lives on Planet Dartmouth, and our leave-term lives in the rest of the world: community.
Community bonds are the next logical step up from the warmth and understanding of a good friend. The strength one can derive from a healthy relationship is multiplied ten times over in a strong community. Appreciation for this may even bring us one minuscule step closer to ending the racism and sexism of the Beta poems of the world.
As I walk somewhat aimlessly around campus, I know by the looks on some faces that I am not the only person feeling a bit lost.
However, I can almost guarantee that a good remedy is to reach out to someone else: someone you know, someone you have never seen, someone who sits anonymously in your 10A, or the friend you know with certainty will be a part of your life forever.
It may just become apparent she or he cannot figure out Netscape either.
