My perfect picture of sophomore summer has slowly begun to slip away. I once dreamt of sunny days, little to no workload and a smaller student body on campus. Now, that dream has officially died. I am instead faced with dark clouds and thunderstorms, the same tedious work to do and the disturbing presence of high school and middle school students on campus. But I have realized that my sense of dissatisfaction is not due to the fact that sophomore summer had been a terrible experience thus far. My discontent is a result of preconceived notions about what exactly sophomore summer would consist of.
The first time I heard about Dartmouth's sophomore summer program was on a tour during my first visit to campus in the spring of 2007. The hype surrounding Dartmouth's Summer term began before I had even made my decision to come to the College, and has continued into the first few weeks of the summer. Prior to any of us actually participating in it, there was a constant reminder from upperclassmen that sophomore summer would be a term to "hang out" and take easy courses. I had mentally prepared myself to begin my laziest term yet.
I bought into these expectations, but holding on to them often results in a sense of disappointment with sophomore summer, or at least a feeling of not experiencing the term the "right" way.
Though summer has just started, I already feel this disappointment, because the term has not lived up to its popular definition. Rather than spending our time indoors working, I expected to be outside enjoying the beautiful sunshine a relief from the typical Hanover cold. Weather.com became one of my most often visited web sites as I searched for a day of warm, sunny weather amidst the forecast of "scattered thunderstorms" that dominated the page last week. My course selection became dependent on Student Assembly's course guide, rather than how interested I was in the courses' material. I frantically searched for an easy class, stressing about whether or not I would be able to live that ideal sophomore summer. And although the upperclassmen had dispersed, campus still was not completely ours, as our halls were soon infiltrated by middle and high school summer campers.
I became so preoccupied with forcing my summer to fit the socially pervasive ideal that I forgot to evaluate what I actually wanted from the term. I eventually realized that I did not even want sophomore summer to be a summer camp-type of experience. I did not want to take courses simply because they were supposed to be easy. The rainy weather did not bother me as much as I initially believed it would, and I actually enjoyed seeing prospective Dartmouth students experience our campus. My initial unwillingness to diverge from my originally planned sophomore summer experience had blinded me to what I actually wanted.
My summer term experience was concluded before it even began. There exists a pressure to experience sophomore summer according to an exaggerated definition that portrays Summer term as a relaxed experience involving little learning and a lot of "hanging out." It is important that we do not allow this pressure and confined definition to dictate our experience. Any divergence from this definition does not have to equate to a flawed sophomore summer.
Sophomore summer could be your best term yet. It could also be your worst. It could live up to the hype or defy all expectations. Rather than forcing a square peg into a round hole, we should release ourselves from preconceived expectations and instead experience Dartmouth's summer as it truly is. If you want to take organic chemistry, then take it; if you would rather spend all your time inside playing pong, then by all means, sink away. You define your own sophomore summer experience. Perhaps that is the real beauty of sophomore summer.
