My cousin is a bit of a freak. And by that, I mean she's a genius. At the age of three she was performing on local stages, singing five-minute songs in a language she didn't understand. But she is also overly-cautious. She's the kid who, months after she learned to walk down a flight of stairs, would whimper while she hovered her tiny foot over the down step to her sunken living room, too scared to take the step. In an attempt to encourage my cousin's sense of adventure, I took her to a rock climbing gym over spring break. I thought that a new experience might break her out of her protective shell. Looking back, I realize the striking parallels between her experiences that day and the average college student's progression throughout their Dartmouth careers.
At first my cousin didn't quite understand what I meant by indoor rock climbing. So I showed her pictures of the gym's interior accompanied by my own overly-enthusiastic commentary about how cool it was. Even little kids want to be cool. By the time we were in the car she was telling me how she was going to climb all the way to the top. Like my cousin, many of us came to Dartmouth with ideas of the great things we would do. At the time, we were largely ignorant of what the achievement of those goals would actually require. Nonetheless, we were enthralled by the impressive feats we were told we could accomplish here (or later in life because of our Dartmouth educations). Like my cousin's innate cautiousness, the rule-abiding, good-kid act got us here.
Once we stepped into the bouncy-floored gym, however, the 30-foot walls and people crawling on the ceiling led my six-year old cousin to wrap her arms around my legs. She was terrified, and wasn't about to leave my side. I had to physically place her on the wall.
At one point or another, we've all questioned why we are here. Like my cousin confronted with 30-foot walls and experienced climbers, we are dwarfed by the expectations Dartmouth pushes on us and awed by the apparent facility with which others achieve the incredible. We doubt that we can do it.
Finally, I demonstrated the climb for my cousin. As the director helped strap me into my harness, she warned me not to climb up too high. "Adults are always more afraid to let themselves fall than little kids," she told me. I took the director's advice and climbed halfway. When I landed softly, my cousin excitedly asked me to climb all the way to the top. Before I'd made my second landing, my cousin was begging the director for a shot at climbing the wall.
Although my cousin didn't make it to the top of the wall, she had a lot of fun climbing up a few feet and letting herself fall down, over and over again. She had made significant progress since our arrival, climbing about nine feet up before we had to go. When we left she told me she would climb to the ceiling next time.
Some of us continue to progress along my cousin's trajectory. We accept the College's emotional, academic and vocational support. We find mentors who show us how to climb higher and achieve our goals. We try things ourselves. We fail, a lot. But we know that when we fall, the impact will be minimal because of the support system around us. We have fun doing it because we know we are still making progress, which gives us hope that we will eventually scale our own 30 foot walls, or tackle even larger and more technically challenging climbs.
Some of us take it even further and actually make it to the ceiling and then move on to conquer other parts of the gym. Some find a new gym all together. But too many of us remain stagnant. We stay perpetually afraid of failure, of success, afraid that we aren't smart enough, attractive enough or good enough.
We think that if we haven't reached a certain point by now, we never will. That's where the danger lies. We all have as much opportunity for growth as a preschooler. The only thing stopping us is the idea that we don't.
