When I sat down to write a "real talk" article on risk taking, I came to the stark conclusion that I may be the least qualified person on this campus to do so. Out of everything I've written, none of it could be remotely interpreted as "real talk." In addition, I am currently on the most well-worn path at Dartmouth: the male econ major planning to go into business or law. I'm not exactly trailblazing the road less traveled with Robert Frost.
That being said, many other Dartmouth students love to think of themselves as risk takers. They love to snidely criticize people for doing what is "expected of them" rather than finding their own way. This is strange considering that when we enrolled here, we committed ourselves to following one of the safest paths in America: college, not to mention the college whose graduates receive, on average, the highest mid-career salaries in the nation.
If I had to describe our lives (stereotyping 4,200 people here) in one word, it would be "nerfy." Everything that we think is dangerous is actually padded and poses little to no risk. Yet for some reason, we don't like to admit it.
I think the idea that we think of ourselves as risk-takers is deeply rooted in the fact that we go to school in Hanover, because we're really putting ourselves out there by attending an Ivy League school in New Hampshire instead of one in Pennsylvania or Connecticut. We post screenshots on Facebook from Weather.com to let our friends from home know how cold it is, we jump into frozen ponds, we've even designated five ideal locations for risky outdoor sex.
Because of the innate privilege and safety that comes with our surroundings, we as Dartmouth students have developed a distorted sense of what constitutes risk-taking. Because there is nothing risky about going to Dartmouth, we invent risk that the outside world would find laughable. We play pong without a water cup, we boot and rally, we drink things that most likely contain urine.
But above all the other nerfy aspects of Dartmouth, the most ridiculous forms of invented risk-taking are academic in nature. Occasionally you hear someone say, "Yeah, I'm kind of going out on a limb by doing a geography major, but I didn't want to sell my soul in the econ department." Yeah, I'll keep you in my prayers. That Ivy League degree could really weigh you down.
The pervasiveness of imaginary risk at Dartmouth extends to signing up for classes. Everyone, myself included, likes to think that they're really putting themself out there by signing up for a particularly hard class. They'll tell you all about how hard the class is and how nervous they are. Odds are the median grade isn't below a B. I don't think most of the outside world would consider taking a class at Dartmouth in which you have a 50/50 chance of getting a B to be a huge risk.
College administrators go out of their way to shelter us from this academic "risk-taking." They publish median grades on our transcripts, and they created the NRO. What does an NRO do? It encourages you to take risks that don't exist: nerfy risks.
I'm not saying that Dartmouth students are incapable of taking risks. Some of us take out huge loans to go here, hoping that they'll pay off in the long run. Some of us come here not knowing how our families will get by in our absence. At some point in our lives, we'll all face important decisions that'll open us and those around us up to actual risk. I'm just saying that whether we take Music 51 or Art History 53 for your ART distrib isn't one of them.
We go to a top 10 college in the safest town in the safest state in America as much of a risk-free environment as you could as for. I guess it just comes down to admitting it. People thrive on risk and Dartmouth doesn't provide it, so we seek it out not by actually taking risks, but by telling ourselves that we do. Most things that we would consider risks, the rest of the world would consider white girl problems.
