On the morning of September 9, 1999, I woke up at 3 a.m. after incessant poking on the part of my parents, stumbled blindly into the back seat of our rented van and forced my uncooperative eyelids to stay open so I could get just one last glimpse of my house.
As the van backed out of the driveway where I spent hundreds of hours unsuccessfully honing my basketball skills, I could not help but thinking about all the things I was leaving behind: mom's delicious meals, my ancient 1988 Toyota Camry (hey, it got me from point A to point B), my private room, my dear PC computer (and the world of PCs), my friends (actually, they all left me gradually earlier in the month) and most importantly the sense of familiarity that I felt within my town. After being at Dartmouth for a week, I realized that there was something missing from this list my immediate connection to news.
OK, it is understandable that I would have no idea of what is happening in the outside world during my Dartmouth Outing Club trip. Three days of canoeing (whoo, section G 100-101 ) on the rivers and camping in the woods of New England. A culinary feast each day featuring fragrant couscous served with slabs of mouth-watering cheddar cheese, burritos with slabs of mouth-watering cheddar cheese and exotic pitas or tortillas stuffed with peanut butter, cream cheese and yes, slabs of mouth-watering cheddar cheese. The first day of our trip had an additional bonus: a torrential downpour that made me feel like Noah rather than a proud 'shmen on his DOC trip. I could remember asking myself: "Why Me?" When we finally rejoined civilization, or some form of it, at Moosilauke Ravine Lodge, everybody was dancing (not just the Salty Dog), bonding, and inhaling the fresh air they were sharing with fresh people; drowned beneath Dartmouth spirit and unable to worry about any happenings outside Dartmouth.
I started realizing how uninformed I was after returning to campus. Instead of learning breaking news of great interest to me the day it happened through the newspaper or the evening news as I have been used to, I found out one or two days late through word of mouth and BlitzMail.
Imagine my surprise as an ardent tennis fan when a friend informed me that young Serena Williams managed to upset the top two female tennis players in the world on her way to the United States Open Tennis Championship while I was canoeing over the weekend. The fact that I found out about this on Tuesday, though the women's final was played on Saturday, gave me an initial sign that I was not updated on current events.
Three nights later, I was visiting a friend in her room when she received a call from her mother telling her of Hurricane Floyd's recent path through their hometown in New York the previous night. Being from New Jersey, I immediately took it upon myself to call home and find out if Floyd spared or smacked the Garden State. Imagine my surprise when my mother told me that our whole basement was flooded with a foot of water, that most schools in New Jersey were closed the previous day in anticipation of the storm and that President Clinton declared eight counties in New Jersey (including mine) a disaster area.
I lived in that house for the past seven years in peaceful and sometimes boring tranquility. I just stole one last peek at it. Now it is flooded? Suddenly, I came to the realization that it poured on the first day of my DOC trip since I was to miss the flood at my own house I was ashamed that I was a day late in calling home and inquiring about the situation but I realized that, once again, I was too involved in learning the outline of the campus and the names of my fellow 'shmen to keep up with news.
Less than a week passed before I received a Blitz from the Dartmouth Asian Organization offering me counseling for the earthquake that occurred the previous day in Taiwan. Even though I am not Taiwanese, this piece of news was noteworthy to me because I am Asian-American and also because I am human I quickly went online and found out that this quake of 7.3 magnitude and an aftershock of 6.8 magnitude claimed over 2,000 lives in the middle of the Taiwanese night Here I was, an 18 year old college student not even connected to the world but I have a good excuse. I know I could have picked up a newspaper during orientation. I know I could have been more informed. I just couldn't find time because I was intoxicated with my first whiff of Dartmouth.
