My application for graduation is due in a few days. Actually, I think it was due yesterday, but I'm not too worried about that. I figure I'll just do it in the true spirit of Dartmouth: pay the fine and everything will be golden. I don't actually check my HB, so when a friend told me that I needed to apply to graduate, I was intrigued. Maybe this was a chance to re-live those zany high school days of application fun where people turned their summers at band-camp or their stints on the debate team into essays on how they were the next Mother Theresa.
I was kind of hoping for an essay portion to the application. It would be a nice chance to flex the muscles of my nostalgia and see why I deserved to get out of here. Would fear of even higher tuition be a valid reason? What about the fact that I'm mortally terrified of the new library? I tried to dig a little deeper into myself and find a truly noble reason why I should graduate, but all I could come up with was my odd knack for taking a tumble down the stairs at a party at least once every big weekend. How to make these translate into a reason why I am worthy of graduation?
When I finally journeyed to the Hop to get my mail, I was sorely disappointed to learn that applying for graduation involves a mere series of check marks. Check this box if they spelled my name right. Check this box if I'd like to join the half-hung-over parade this June. Check this box if my major is the same as it was two and a half years ago. There is a slightly more detailed short-answer section, where I get to decide whether or not I'd like all 12 of my middle names to appear on my diploma. In all, I'd say it was a truly meaningful reflection on my time here. Although I've definitely had a more significant rapport with some credit card applications.
The whole thing seems kind of disproportionate to me -- what with all they make you do to get in and then to stay -- the actual leaving part of the deal seems to be handled in a rather cursory way. The ideal institution should have its departing students as eager to leave as they were to arrive -- not eager in a "if-I-spend-one-more-second-here-I'll-explode" way, but eager in that way people get when they can't wait to unleash themselves onto the next sphere of their lives.
Maybe no one asks us why we think we should graduate because no one would be satisfied with the answer. Maybe we get so caught up in all of the little things that go on here -- the endless bones we have to pick with the institution, with the people who administrate it, with the people who teach at it, and with the people who attend it -- that we forget that the main purpose is to prepare ourselves to exist in a context outside of Dartmouth.
It's so easy for me to make this place my be-all and end-all; if nothing else, it makes each frantic 10-week stretch that much more interesting. But in a few months I'll be in a place where, most likely, no one will give a crap about Residential Life or 24-hour study spaces or broken blitz computers in Collis. Does this mean these things should start becoming less important to me? Is it a sign that I'm not ready to leave if they don't? In the eyes of Dartmouth, I'm ready to graduate -- I've finished my distribs and the registrar knows how to spell my name. I have been educated. I just haven't figured out if that actually means anything.