You are marching on a brisk Friday night, decked out in your green class jersey and adorned with cheap green flair provided by your undergraduate advisor. Your floormates, along with hundreds of 'shmen, have joined you. Intoxicated by the collective effervescence and most likely alcohol your peers parade across the streets of the College, shouting exuberant cheers, brandishing butcher paper signs, and growing in number as members of other 'shmen clusters trickle in to coalesce into the amorphous 'shmob.
You make your final march across the streets of downtown Hanover, eventually arriving upon the heart of the Green. Before the lighted visage of Dartmouth Hall, the president ascends to the podium to give a rousing speech or, at least, that's what you think he's trying to do over the crappy sound system.
You struggle to push forward, trying to escape from the 'shmob. No luck. The jeering upperclassmen, once bearable, become splenetic, spewing obscenities at your face. On the opposite side, the bonfire roars with an even greater rage. Some of the rowdier upperclassmen have begun to close around the tracks, pushing you closer to the blazing heat of the pyre. With no way to escape, you attempt to veer away from both, but your peers continue to jostle against you.
You see a hand, reaching out. You crane your neck forward, squinting your eyes in the dim light. You recognize your would-be savior a floormate you've only spoken to once or twice in the past few weeks. Eagerly, you extend your arm over the desperate throng, and your friend yanks you out. You shout out an appreciative remark, but he/she doesn't seem to hear you above the crackles of the conflagration. Neither you nor your friend let go of the other, and you run in tandem, threading your path between throngs. You grab onto the hands of more of your peers, and your 'schmob chain continues to extend one bye one, and despite the chaos that surrounds you, you realize that you are having fun.
This may or may not be the scenario that you will come across in a few hours, but it certainly was mine. And a year since, the College bonfire is more than a reiteration of a cherished tradition. Instead, this scenario can also aptly describe the upperclassmen Dartmouth experience, although our metaphorical marathon around the bonfire has yet to end.
I, along with many others, arrived at the starting line of my Dartmouth race with impossibly optimistic expectations, and as we treaded our way across the track, many of us realized the gravity of our situation as the pressures of collegiate life academics, finances, social life and other extra burdens that come with being an adult threaten to overwhelm us on one side of the track and the glaring reality of post-collegiate life rages against us in the other.
Being more hubristic than most, I believed that I could excel by sheer personal effort I wouldn't waste my time pursuing fleeting college relationships that I believed would only drag me down. But on the actual racetrack, I found that I had grossly overestimated my own academic abilities, trying desperately not to lose my footing in the ensuing fracas. It was then that I reached for the hands that had been extended to me. From then on, my friends and I have shared each other's food, burdens and happiness. It was with them that I realized that I did not have to endure the race alone.
Within the unrelenting marathon of Dartmouth life, the strain of maintaining the link may sometimes become difficult to bear. You may find that you have no choice but to let go, but you will no longer be worried. You are already making new connections. And while the exact nitty-gritty specifics of your Science of Life biology class or Introduction to Economic Policy Issues course will eventually fade from memory, the bonds that you forge at Dartmouth will weather the test of time, just like you will weather the trials at Dartmouth with them.
So if you find yourself stumbling upon the course of your collegiate career, hold on tight to your companions.
