I gave up my Ethernet connection. I had to
buy my own toilet paper (until I realized that "borrowing" it from various places worked just as well). I lived in a room that had just a few too many bugs and spiders for my liking. When I forgot my key, S&S could not come help me. Most of all, I sacrificed proximity to campus. And so went my experience living off-campus in the Greens during my sophomore summer.
But then again, living in the Greens did not even come close to preparing me for my current living situation.
At this moment, I should technically be living in an apartment in Dublin, studying English at Trinity College on an FSP. Yet due to the recent world events, I (as well as a handful of other Dartmouth students) chose not to go abroad. And so here I am, back at Dartmouth once again, but living and experiencing school in a very different way.
I am one of three lucky girls who live in Vermont. And not just "over the river and over the bridge" Vermont. No, I live in Quechee, Vt. As in Simon Pierce, the Quechee Gorge and the town of Woodstock. I take not one, but two highways to get to school. I travel 10 minutes on country backroads that twist and turn and force me to drive 25 miles per hour. And when I drive to school for my 8:00 a.m. lift, my 15-minute drive turns into a 35-minute drive because I sit in rush hour traffic. Yes, I am now a commuter. I schedule, I plan, and I always pack my car for at least two days.
My Vermont getaway is actually a condo -- a Quechee Lakes Resort Condo, to be exact. My two roommates and I each have our own bedroom, and share two bathrooms, a kitchen, a dining area, a living room, and a study area. We are, to a certain degree, living as tourists.
Living in Quechee certainly has its benefits.
Amenities. They are the greatest luxuries -- once you have them, of course. And we have plenty. There is the washer and dryer, the disposal, the dishwasher, the microwave, the fireplace, cable TV and a VCR in each bedroom as well as in the living room, a porch with a grill, need I go on?
As an interstate commuter, I am also more able to pursue the ever-important student-teacher relationship that all good Dartmouth students attempt. For living in Quechee has now given me a new and valid reason for going to office hours. It is a great conversation piece: "I'm so sorry, Professor, I couldn't make it to class because I live in Quechee and there was an accident on the back roads and it took me almost two hours to get to school this morning!"
Or take my English class. We just finished reading the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and learning about how Emerson ties nature to education because it is both beautifully useless as well as essential. And so I took more notice of those foggy morning mountains and running streams around me, and realized that I could use my surroundings to show my professor that I was truly indulging myself in Emerson's work. After all, shouldn't I use this opportunity to further my relationship with nature just like Emerson would hope? Of course. I love nature and the outdoors. I just hated my four-day, easy hiking DOC trip.
This is what I miss: walking to class, walking to eat, walking home, walking to my friends' rooms, showering somewhere other than the gym, going out without having to worry about where I will sleep if I cannot drive home.
This is what I do not miss: DDS, sharing a bathroom with an entire floor of people I barely know, wearing flip-flops in the shower, being woken up at 4:00 a.m. by people screaming in the hall, cramming all my belongings into a room fit for one person that is actually holding two. I lived in the Choates freshman year. I could go on.
And this is what I have gained: normalcy.
In the dorms, on the one hand, you wake up, say, twenty minutes before your 10:00 class (perhaps hung over or exhausted from too little sleep or both), throw on clothes and rush to class. Here, you either struggle to keep your eyelids above the halfway mark, or struggle to decipher the notes you are taking. Lunchtime might then turn into naptime, which is cut short by a sports practice or a meeting. For dinner you head to Food Court and make that ever-important entrance as you walk down the aisle looking at people eat as they watch you walk by. Then you do homework. Or you don't do homework -- maybe you go out instead. Either way, you probably end up going to bed late, and begin the same cycle the next morning. Normal? I think not.
Now, on the other hand, take my typical day. I sleep. A lot. But I sleep a lot at night. I come home after dinner and do my homework, but without the temptation of blitzing every 30 minutes. I talk to my friends on the phone, not solely over e-mail. I watch the 11:00 p.m. news and sometimes fall asleep before it is over. I have friends over to cook dinner and watch movies.
At Dartmouth, we are constantly going, going, going. Here, the clich line, "work hard, play hard," soundly rings true. Of course I miss the typical Dartmouth lifestyle that I am so used to. But for the first time, I come home to a place that gives me a sense of relaxation and control. Maybe my routine this term is not normal in Dartmouth's definition of the word; certainly, my daily life this fall does not fit the mold for a typical student. But it does fit a mold that I have grown to like -- at least for now.
