Two a.m. a few nights ago found me watching "Planet Earth" and trying to figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life. As I paged through Idealist.org's 1,909 internship listings -- deciding if I wanted to dedicate my life to human rights, the environment or education -- I just about flipped out. I'm 19, directionless and in no way qualified to be making these decisions alone.
Christmas break is over, and many Dartmouth students like myself are facing a reality check. There are D-Plans to figure out, study abroad applications to submit and future classes to plan. What to do? Where to go? How the hell do I find the trailhead to this life path I keep hearing about?
For '12s and upperclassmen alike, figuring out what we want to do with our lives and where to get started is a daunting task. To help, there is Career Services, and let me be the first to say that their staff is awesome (Stacy, you're a saint). But meeting with a Career Services employee is not mandatory, and in the fast-paced life here at Dartmouth, it is easy to get overwhelmed and forget to arrange to see them.
Then there are our faculty advisers -- but their one-time required meetings with us and their narrow focus on their own fields leave much to be desired.
I realize that we, as accomplished and motivated Dartmouth students, should be able to either arrange to see Career Services, switch faculty advisers or take advantage of other willing, friendly faces on campus for advice. But maybe the majority of us need a more forceful shove -- for our own good -- to think about our place and future here at Dartmouth, as well as in the real world.
Dartmouth students, here in our little bubble, need a little compulsory contemplation on what sort of life we want to lead in the years ahead. It is easy to get lost in the endless stream of classes, clubs and social scenes, and to forget about the kind of people we want to someday be.
I don't suggest people should plan or know exactly what they want to do from now until the end of their days; I think that's a pretty dull and narrow-minded way to do things. But the sooner we can figure out what kind of life we want to lead and the kind of work we want to do, the sooner we can go about doing what we do best -- accomplishing our goals.
A possible solution would be having mandatory, once-a-term conversations with an adviser who knows us personally. The College acknowledges, with their faculty-advising program, that students need a mandatory advising session, but from what I've experienced and heard, this is a broken system.
Career Services provides wonderful assistance, but lacks the mandatory component. What we need are advisers who would be like class deans, but whose sole obligation would be providing incoming freshmen with advice on course selection, academic paths and career planning.
Having mandatory meetings would force us, early on, to consider the vast options we have outside of Dartmouth and, in so doing, help us focus on the opportunities here in Hanover. Getting at least a little jump on career advice early in our time at Dartmouth would aid our education, and vice versa.
Maybe we are spoiled already by the opportunities provided for us here at the College. But without being pushed to take advantage and learn about these opportunities, many of us will inevitably waste them. Instead of looking back as upperclassmen and regretting our lack of knowledge and planning, we could be thanking the adviser who helped us become the person we wished to be.
I know this is a time of economic crunch, and hiring enough advisers to adequately cope with each incoming class could be an impossibility, but a mandatory advising system that works would allow students to take advantage of all there is to offer at Dartmouth -- and to plan for what comes afterwards.
