Towards the end of the summer, as the rest of the college world was already humming with the new school year, we Dartmouth students had a little extra time on our hands for reflections on the past year. Frankly, by mid-September, with summer internships ending and friends gone back to school, what else was there to do?
After a day filled with personal reflection and copious television talk shows, I had the opportunity to break with the daily monotony and drive to the swank Philadelphia suburb of Manayunk for a dinner with my father and his college friends. In sharp contrast to their days of nervously studying in secluded corners of the library and joking around in the frat house, here were three distinguished doctors reminiscing on their college years while munching on minuscule portions of baby asparagus and radicchio.
"College was the best of times and the worst of times," one of them said.
Nothing illustrates that point better than this weekend. As you read this, Dartmouth alumni are converging on Hanover to relive the time-honored traditions of Homecoming. Just as it was for past classes, the green light will sparkle atop Baker Tower, the bonfire will rage with a furious intensity of light and heat, and everyone present will feel a special awe that this little college in the wilderness is a truly amazing place. For many freshmen, the confirmation that they chose the right college will be more firmly cemented with each lap of the bonfire. (Although with zero laps, they'll just have to make do with sustaining their second-degree burns on their own time.)
Ask the alumni on Dartmouth Night how they feel about the time they spent in Hanover. I can envision their wistful smiles as they recall the special times they had here -- the big white puffy cumulus cloud of memory that hangs over those years of their lives. Dollars to doughnuts, they'll sing Dartmouth's praises faster than a water glass gets refilled at Panda House. There is, however, something missing from alumni responses ... they don't have midterms next week!
We students will loudly sing the Alma Mater, party hard at Early Eighties, and live it up this weekend, because we know that next week our happiness will be rapidly squelched by the impending doom of huge hairy horrible exams. The Dartmouth experience fun and fulfilling? Not next week! There will be more tears shed, EBAs grease consumed, and more frantic and expensive phone calls made to our homes than there has been yet this year. If you're not miserable next week, don't cross paths with me. I have three midterms in four days and I'm already panicked.
Midterm week is the time we'll cry, "I could have gone to Fill-In-The-Blank State University and it would have been so easy!" I still get nervous remembering Prof. Wilcox dropping a ten page Chemistry 5 exam on my desk with a thud that has certainly been embellished by memory. The feeling you get right before an important test has got to be the nadir of existence.
My dad and his cronies are right, four years of college brings us the highest highs and the lowest lows. Glossed over by time, we'll remember how great it was to be vitally young and intellectually active, living in a utopian community. We too will return to Hanover for Homecoming with the positive nostalgia of our crazy college years. We tend to dwell on the high points, but to our credit, we're going through the most intense academic and physical stress of our lives. A Dartmouth degree would be worthless unless it required from us painful toil and laborious work, and by the same token it would be meaningless if it didn't signify for us a happy and memorable time of life.
Right now you are strapped in to the big college roller coaster and you're approaching the top of the big hill. Scream, laugh, shriek in that hysterical combination of delight and fear -- Homecoming weekend is going to be a large injection of fun. Come Monday, exams will hit and the roller coaster will zoom downward as your stomach lurches up through your nose.
We all volunteered to come to this amusement park and get on this ride, and most of us will lift the metal plate of the safety belt at the end of four years with a big grin. This thing we call college is both ecstatically wonderful and worse than several forms of medieval torture. If you feel like a poster child for Post-Adolescent Mood Swings Anonymous (PAMSA), you're not alone. It's all part of the big sinusoidal curve of college.
Enjoy Homecoming. Good luck on your midterms.
