When I was in elementary and middle school, fun was organized play dates with friends, either at their house or mine. After school or on the weekends, we would pile into Mom's minivan and brave the torturous Atlanta traffic before arriving at our destination and dashing into the house. These outings, though often spontaneously schemed up after a soccer or lacrosse game, were usually planned out in advance.
Since I was around six, my social life my predetermined quota of fun has been scheduled. Last week, I had to swap class schedules with a friend, mull over meetings and forecast my workload for the coming week until we were finally able to squeeze in lunch on Tuesday after 10As. I resent that it took so much effort and planning to do something as simple as eat and catch up with a friend.
To me, fun is feeling free, unburdened by worry or commitments, and doing things just to do them, not because I have to. What I dislike about Dartmouth is the pressure I often feel to have a particular kind of fun, the kind that occurs on sunny days in shady places, in basements marinated with Keystone and blaring classic rock. I like playing pong as much as the next guy, but it's not my go-to outlet for having a good time. I hate when people say "I haven't seen you lately" and mean they haven't seen you in a basement recently.
I'd rather be above ground, especially when the sun is still shining. I don't want to be a frat rat scuttling around the basement, subsisting on smooth brews and Gusanoz. The Dartmouth definition of fun, or at least the prevailing Greek version of it, doesn't hold the same appeal for me that it once did.
Our parents, friends and older siblings tell us that college is the best four years of our lives, and Dartmouth drills into us the belief that sophomore summer is the zenith of our college experience.
These 10 weeks become built up and mythologized until they are supposed to be the best ten weeks we will ever have in our entire lives. So whenever I'm not having a blast, I feel guilty, like I'm missing something. Maybe it's because I'm taking three classes and doing research and working harder than I have before, and I'm not used to being in study mode when the sun is bright and the air is sticky. Maybe I'm focusing on the wrong things. Maybe (or probably) I'm not as good at balancing my academics, extracurriculars and fun as I should be. I really don't know. What I do know is that I hate feeling as if I need to schedule friends and fun into my life.
The best time I've had this summer was on the Fourth of July, when I blew off the paper I was supposed to be writing to go hike Mount Moosilauke with some friends. I'll never forget climbing to the top of the mountain to see the sun set and watch fireworks go off in the valley below us. Something tells me I won't remember, much less care, about that paper I was supposed to write.
My goal for the next six weeks of summer is to stress less and play more, to sit and smile in the sun and not worry about tomorrow, to live today, in the here and now. I want to have a more disorganized kind of fun. I want to drop everything and go on a crazy adventure that I'll remember for a long time.
