Sophomore Summer, in many ways, is the apex of our time at Dartmouth. If your college years are supposed to be the four most fun years of your life, sophomore Summer is supposed to be the crown jewel of the experience. There are no other terms where we have as much free time, and summer is the only season when the New Hampshire weather never actually tries to kill us all.
I could list all of the ways you can have fun this term, but that would be insulting to you (did you know there is a river dock!? Dartmouth has frats!!). Certainly, the free time many of us are afforded this term lends itself to enjoying everything that Dartmouth and the Upper Valley have to offer swimming in the river, jumping off high structures, intellectual challenges like Astro 3 and inter-Greek-house athletic competitions.
But for all the ways in which sophomore Summer is supposed to be relaxing and "fun," it can also be a painful reminder of the finite nature of our time here. We are halfway done with college, as scary and unreal as that sounds. Nothing will really ever be new in the sense that it has been for the past two years. We will never feel the same way we felt when we stood in front of Robo for the first time during Trips. We won't pledge a fraternity or sorority again. Chances are, there are no more parts of campus for you to explore. Our class is no longer young in the eyes of this community. We will still continue to experience new things, but we now know pretty much what to expect. Much of our trajectory at Dartmouth has been mapped out for us, and time for trial and exploration is dwindling.
For this reason, students at Dartmouth, particularly over sophomore Summer, find it imperative to seek out "fun" as often and as aggressively as possible. Maybe this is due to a growing feeling that our time here now has a foreseeable endpoint. And yet this term comes along with an asterisk: the "fun" associated with the summer is only temporary.
The conception that sophomore Summer is here for fun is also an illusion we are still here to do work. The need to declare a major, the '13s' assumption of leadership roles in campus organizations and the highly pervasive presence of corporate recruiting all remind us of that Dartmouth is not strictly synonymous with fun.
We will soon be experiencing the falling action of our college years, and it's hard to avoid thinking about the conclusion. At a certain point, though, conclusions become a critical part of life, and sophomore Summer is a prelude to that series of endings. All of us have probably already experienced several of these conclusions while at Dartmouth. Longstanding Dartmouth traditions vanish, friends transfer or graduate and important relationships come to an end. Many of us, too, have to contend with external factors that even Dartmouth can't protect us from. As much as Dartmouth can be a haven for us, it's not an escape from any reality. Our purpose in college is not solely to have fun, and we need to start anticipating the finish line.
Only by accepting the impermanence of our time at Dartmouth can we fully appreciate the opportunities we have in front of us. Instead of focusing on how to black out the hardest and on other superficial ways of having fun, we should all take the time to acknowledge the ephemerality of sophomore Summer and of our Dartmouth careers and what that means to us.
