After three years in Hanover, my awed, appreciative, freshman-year impression of Dartmouth has since developed into the cynical perspective of one who envisions the campus only in the framework of hum-drum everyday life. But working as a senior interviewer full-time this summer, I was paid to promote the school and all of its wonderful attributes. As I told visitors all about our accessible faculty, our strong language programs and of course, the flexibility of the D-plan, I realized where Dartmouth's real strength lies -- in its students.
It is this community of capable dynamic individuals who are excited to be together, working with one another, which lends such a friendly atmosphere to the campus. Visitors can sense it, even when we seem to have forgotten that it exists.
It wasn't until I was incessantly presented with the eager faces of student and parent visitors who had the same awestruck expression we all exhibited not long ago that I could recall why I had that enthusiasm in the first place. These visitors were touring as many as 12 campuses in a one week time frame, and almost all swore that Dartmouth was the most beautiful and friendliest school they had visited. If the students I interviewed were all telling the truth, Dartmouth is the number one choice for about 90 percent of them.
Watching these faces and hearing their enthusiasm, I too began to look at Dartmouth as though I were a visitor. Specifically, I began to look at the students themselves. I was more than pleasantly surprised by the people I interviewed. They ceased to appear as young high school students but rather as very accomplished young men and women with whom I could have chatted for hours beyond our designated 30-minute session.
Yet, what seemed remarkable to me was the realization that my classmates had to be as accomplished and as interesting as the students I was interviewing.
For some reason, we neglect to focus on our individual achievements and capabilities and tend to gel into a cohesive Dartmouth mold as we acclimate to college life. In this larger community full of accomplished students we overlook each other's unique qualities.
In reality, the aspect of Dartmouth which makes it so appealing and unique, aside from its highly-lauded faculty and facilities are the students as individuals. When we take the time to get to know one another and explore each other's interests, we can learn as much from each other as we do from our professors.
I don't believe Dartmouth students necessarily regress from enthusiastic matriculating first-year's into cynical uniform upper-classmen, but we tend to treat one another that way. Our capabilities and enthusiasm as a composite student body are still readily apparent to visitors, but we ourselves seem to have lost sight of this.
My new view of Dartmouth became crystallized all the more this week while spending time with our prominent visitors from Russia who participated in the Dickey Center symposium, "Law, the Courts & Society: Russia and America." They had no opportunity to attend class or use many of the facilities, but they did interact with some students and faculty while they were here. It was this interaction upon which their impressions were made.
Veniamin Yakovlev, Chief Justice of the Russian High Court of Arbitration, told me that in his next life, he would like to be a Dartmouth student. He loved watching the students on the green and offered play-by-play descriptions of the pick-up frisbee games that were being played. In his opening remarks for the symposium, he said, "When I return to Russia, I will tell people that I've been to New Hampshire, to Hanover, to Dartmouth. And I will be proud."
At dinner that night with American Supreme Court Justice Souter, President Freedman and many distinguished members of the legal profession present, Tamara Grigorievna Morshakova, Deputy Justice of the Constitutional Court of Russia, made a toast saying that she and her delegation would return to Russia feeling like Dartmouth alumni, with strong feelings for and a love of this beautiful place. Hopefully, it won't take graduation to make us realize that which we knew and felt prior to matriculation.
