During the recent Class of 2002 Family weekend, my family came up to Hanover to visit with me and to get a better sense of what my life at Dartmouth College is like. Upon walking into my house and getting her first whiff of the stale beer fumes emanating from the basement, my mom made use of the Dartmouth vernacular and exclaimed, "I think I'm going to boot." Not wanting my parents to get too clear an idea of what their $130,000 college investment is really paying for, I decided to get them out of the frat as soon as possible. We set off looking for a classier place, one where our shoes (and the dog) wouldn't stick to the floor and the beverages weren't served exclusively in cheap, 12-oz. plastic cups. So I took them to another Webster Avenue abode, the President's house, where President Wright and his wife were giving a reception for the visiting families.
When I introduced myself to Ms. Wright, she remembered my name from a list of guests invited to a dinner at her house in honor of author Alice McDermott, who is on campus today. As a creative writing major with literary ambitions and a fondness for Irish and Irish-American literature, I was thrilled by the chance to meet one of the truly great voices in literature today. And yet, when Ms. Wright asked me if I would be attending the dinner, I found myself muttering something like, "I'd really love to, but I have a midterm exam the following morning that I need to study for." Ms. Wright looked surprised and my parents looked embarrassed. What the hell was wrong with me? When did I become so overly-grade conscious that I would forgo a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet a National Book Award winning, best-selling author for the sake of a few extra hours of studying for a midterm exam?
College, as Ms. Wright implied, is about experiences, not exams. It is far too easy to lose sight of what's truly important in our time here. I came to Dartmouth to learn everything I could about the person I am and the person I am becoming and that experience doesn't readily translate into any letter grade or GPA. While I'm not suggesting that exams and grades are without merit, I am suggesting that more time needs to be spent enjoying the out-of-classroom experiences that make up the value of a Dartmouth education. As President Wright said in his speech at the reception, we are all privileged to be here. But that privilege, and the $130,000 bill attached to it, grants us more than merely the information we will glean from countless textbooks and expectorate out on countless exams during the course of our four years here.
There's an awful lot to be learned in the classroom and the professors here are among the best this country has to offer. But that doesn't scratch the surface of justifying the enormous investment -- temporally, monetarily, and emotionally -- a student puts in Dartmouth. Spend a beautiful afternoon on the Green doing anything other than studying. Hang out at the rope swing before it becomes extinct. Hang out on frat row before it becomes extinct. Skip an occasional 2A to drive down to Fenway Park when Pedro's pitching. Take a 5 a.m. road trip to Fort Lou's. Take a 5 a.m. road trip to Montreal. Attend a poetry reading. Attend a football game. Swim in the river. Hike in the woods. Join an organization, meet new people, and forge lifelong friendships. But don't spend four prime years of your life holed up in some library cubicle, getting an ulcer from constantly worrying about grades. You'll have access to books and libraries and computers the rest of your life, but you only get to be a college kid once.
Maybe it's easy for me to say that college should be about something more than just your GPA. My family has always supported me no matter how well or poorly I've done in school. I'm not pre-med. I have no intention of ever going to law school. The whole idea of corporate recruiting makes my stomach turn (although I'll probably buckle under and end up selling my soul, lest I have to repay loans until I'm a senile, old, toothless man). For a lot of my friends, however, the pressure to succeed academically is a lot higher -- of course, most of these friends will take their 3.95 GPA's and become fast-track investment bankers, making more money on their lunch breaks than I'll end up making in a year. But there are more important things in life. Or so I keep telling myself.
