Of all the benign questions I'm asked at holiday parties, the one I dread the most goes something like, "So tell me, how do you like Dartmouth?"
I always feel obligated to talk about Dartmouth in terms of other schools in order to provide a frame of reference. I typically rattle off some gene-ric info it's bigger than Middlebury, it's crunchier than the other Ivies and we have a Greek system, but it's like, different from other Greek systems.
What I can squeeze into a few minutes of cocktail conversation is only a veil that hides how I actually feel. Thankfully, I'm a convincing small-talker, because if the person who asked the question somehow sensed that my prefabricated Dartmouth spiel was indeed bullshit and not really indicative of my experience at all, and then proceeded to ask me how I really felt, I would probably turn our conversation into a three-hour therapy session.
Suffice it to say that like many of us, I love Dartmouth in a complicated kind of way. In the vein of childhood fantasies about running away from home to find some mythical place without parents, siblings or homework, who hasn't, from time to time, fantasized about going to school with better weather, an actual dating scene or the absence of incessant stress?
I almost went to Cornell, where I could have played for one of the best lacrosse teams in the country. Instead I chose Dartmouth, whose lacrosse team had won the Ivy League Championship a whopping one time in its history. I chose Dartmouth because that's what my gut told me to do, and I was proud of that. But it was hard to feel proud when we played Cornell at home my freshman year, and they beat us by 13 goals. I thought maybe I should've made the more rational choice instead of following my gut.
The sense of nobility in following your heart evaporates pretty quickly when the unfairness of sports or life smacks you in the face.
I visited my friend at Skidmore this fall. They have a sweet bar scene with lots of good student bands. Everyone is open and nice because it's such a small school. They don't have nearly the same amount of pressure to find a job after graduation. I sensed a creativity and spontaneity that seems really hard to find at Dartmouth, where we're all too scared to do anything out of the ordinary lest you be accused of the ever-feared self-call. Stupid self-call. Stupid Dartmouth.
A friend of mine who's an '11 was in town the other day. We used to get coffee together and vent about our periodic feelings of anger and disappointment with Dartmouth, an exercise that elicited plenty of lively and honest conversation. When I asked him how great it was to finally be out in the world and freed from his former problems, he said it actually wasn't that great. That, surprisingly, he missed being around people he didn't always get along with, in a place that he felt conflicted about.
And, with alum-like clarity that my undergrad mind often lacks, he reminded me that we had originally connected as friends through talking about the stuff that drove us nuts here. The surprising depth with which we, two very different people, have come to know each other, wouldn't have been possible without the mutual frustrations about Dartmouth that brought us closer.
It's understandable to want to leave Dartmouth, or to think that other schools are better for X, Y or Z reason. But every time I run away from Dartmouth either literally or in my imagination I always come back. The point of this column was to compare Dartmouth to other schools, but it's impossible to compare Dartmouth to other schools because I haven't lived at other schools for four years. I haven't been swept up and let down by other schools, and it's here that I've made friendships through shared joys and struggles.
Maybe at Cornell I would have won more lacrosse games. Maybe at Skidmore I wouldn't have felt so inhibited as an underclassman. Perhaps I would have loved those places sooner and more simply.
Here, I feel a complicated kind of love, the kind I can't run away from, the kind that can both hurt and delight, that can inspire raw honesty and connection the kind of love really worth having.
