Class of 2003, is there anything that we can tell you in this short space that you don't already know?
You're graduating seniors, at least two years older than any of us. You've seen it all. You've been there, done that and bought the t-shirt (or at least picked up the free ones).
But looking out the window of our second floor office in Robinson Hall, we are reminded of just what a special place this is. One needs only to take a walk on the Green and watch people tossing Frisbees around, strumming guitars or just relaxing with friends talking about everything from the merits of Hobbes versus Locke to the merits of Food Court versus Homeplate to know that Dartmouth is like no place else.
And then there is the wide-eyed young child looking upward with Mom and Dad pointing at Baker Tower as if to say, "If you work really hard, you can come here, too."
As students we have tended to lose that sense of wonder. Between the all-nighter writing a 12-page paper due in 10 hours, the subsequent crash on the bed and then the prowl up Webster Avenue in search of a free pong table, we don't stop and just take this place in.
So in these last days here at the College on the Hill, soak it all in. Breathe a little deeper. Walk a little slower. Look a little longer. Before you go, realize where you are and appreciate this place you've called home for four years for all the kinds of beauty that it possesses.
As Joni Mitchell so famously observed, "Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone."
It's not gone yet, and neither are you. Embrace it while you can.
