It was a couple of days ago. I, enjoying the beauty of the Upper Valley, playing a round of golf with an alumnus, discussing his wild times at Dartmouth. My slow walk back to the clubhouse, such poignant symbolism for my own 18th hole: graduation day. Sorry, I threw up a bit after that sentence.
This Spring, it's been impossible to shake the unoriginal, maudlin imagery that makes me sound like Sam Elliott in an analogy competition. I'm getting old in Dartmouth-time, and in my age, I've grown accustomed to seeing the world symbolically. It's always bittersweet. As seniors, we exist on the verge of the unknown: banking/consulting/Africa/sustainability/law school. The fear, anticipation, excitement and despair make me feel like my doctor switched my allergy pills with birth control. And I just thought my tender, swelling breasts were from EBA's and pong.
We seniors are on the precipice of the great abyss, soon to molt the comfortable snakeskin of what we know. No more leggings, ladies. You'll have to wear people pants, now.
I realized how much we are truly like seniors, even corporeally. How often have I heard sad stories of Dartmouth men who weren't able to perform in bed, helpless victims of temporary erectile dysfunction? Is it any surprise that seniors grumpily try to go early to Food Court to beat the lines of young whippersnapper freshmen? Or that they can't remember what they did during several hours four nights a week, or even remember the name of someone they had been with the night before? Seniors may keep trying to tell you about that one game of pong that one time, that they won by so much. Or that beautiful girl that they once met at the harbor, or during a trip to the Black Forest. Remember the war against sting operations? We were there on the front lines, making Facebook groups. It's really so nice of you to listen to us, underclassmen. It makes us feel like we've made something of our Dartmouth lives. Yes, we lived and never stopped living.
Recently, I've seen several episodes of incontinence, with shameful next-morning trips to the washer. I've seen Dartmouth men lean up right next to a girl and have to put their hands right on her back and whisper in her ear at a party, just because they know that her hearing is going. At night, I see students struggling to walk home, stumbling and falling over, clawing at the air like turtles on their backs. And the 2010 Class Council rented out the entire BEMA on April 20 just for seniors to have a place to rest from the side effects of their glaucoma medicine. My friend Matt Walker '10 and dozens of other seniors are taking yoga this term, just to regain what they can of their lithe freshmen forms. And let me tell you, Walker could have been in movies as a freshman. Now he's gotten old, and he's only a seldom guest at my Lemon Parties.
Apparently, symptoms of senioritis get so bad that many of us will need canes to walk at graduation.
We've entered the harrowing world of senior bucket lists and "Say What You Need to Say" sing-alongs, while feeling the added gravitas of every Dartmouth monument we pass by. I had even come up with a way to see meaning in Rollins Chapel's red-headed, phallic tower. The tip's on my tongue, but I can't remember now.
The fear of the unknown and the new makes us love every common minute here.
When Chicken Monday an underwhelming but reliable weekly standby brings about buttery pangs of bittersweet emotion, I know that I have become decidedly interpretive about everything Dartmouth. And when the thought of backwards hats and cutoff shirts makes me feel a unique paternalistic affection for athletic bros with too much social capital, I know I'm going senile.
Mundane but familiar like my turgid writing, like my fashion choices, like the Mirror's Overheards, like so many of my Dartmouth acquaintances with whom I remain on a hesitant "hello" basis I'll miss it all. But we shall not go gentle into that good night, Dartmouth. As Dylan Thomas said, "Rage, rage, against the dying of the light." Go and rage, fellow seniors. Finally, you can be Romantic.
