This past fall, I ventured from the summer glory of my Hanover home away from home to the slightly larger metropolis of London. For the first few weeks I carried a map and asked strangers for directions. I found myself amused by the endearing signage ("Mind the Gap," "Give Way"), the accent, and the enduring reverence for the British Crown. I became accustomed to most facets of life in London, learning coins are actually valuable with the pound, and that to say "I'm just taking a piss" meant that you were joking, not urinating. Socially, however, I was still very much at Dartmouth. Or at the very least, trying to be.
Because I lived, travelled and took most classes with exclusively Dartmouth students, I made no British friends. This did not bother me, but perhaps it should have. Instead, I developed friendships with other Dartmouth students in London, most of whom I didn't know well or at all beforehand. As we browsed London markets or sat in the dim lighting of a pub, we discussed mutual Dartmouth friends, our dread of facing the new FoCo, and laughed about how we ironically missed the Dartmouth Greek scene's primitive nightlife, where at least you didn't have to hand over 4 pounds ($6.25!) for a beer.
Forming friendships based on our shared experience at Dartmouth was easy and logical. Dartmouth, for four years of our lives, is our home base. We no longer truly live with our families for better or worse, Dartmouth becomes the place that we return to, no matter where travel or internships or summer breaks may take us. We placed roots our freshman year when we made our first friends, joined organizations and became emotionally involved. Hometowns, though still important, have lost their status as the headquarters of our young adult lives.
So my experience studying abroad with other Dartmouth students came to exist in a strange limbo for me though I was away from my Dartmouth "home" as a physical place, I found myself and my program still shaping my social life and interactions in its image. We weren't in Hanover to "encourage" the '15s around the Homecoming bonfire, but we still had an end-of-term formal abroad. Under the planning of self-appointed formal chairs, we dressed up, held "tails" in an apartment living room, attended a questionably classy group dinner and went in search of somewhere to dance. When I traveled in Europe, for the most part, I didn't meet locals. I climbed the Eiffel Tower in Paris, ate tapas in Madrid and visited the Duomo in Milan, all with my Dartmouth friends.
My experience is common whether it's because we enjoy competitive drinking more than most, or because we just really like each other, Dartmouth kids tend to stick together wherever we travel, creating our safe little Dartmouth microcosms all over the world. But despite this "Dartmouthization" of my abroad experience, there was much I still missed: my friends in Hanover and on off-terms across the world, the convenience of the library and Late Night Collis, classes that were more than other students simply summarizing readings and, yes, pong. I would have had a completely different experience if I went alone on an abroad program, stayed with a host family or made any effort to make non-Dartmouth friends. Some of my peers made great British friends through activities like sports teams and church. They tied themselves to London for a term in the same way that we all involve ourselves in Dartmouth for four years.
But I don't regret not doing this. My term in London was still invaluable, but I knew it was fleeting. I knew that come the beginning of January, I would be driving up I-91, back home to Hanover. On the other hand, you could argue that our time as undergraduates at Dartmouth is also ephemeral. It is, but let's not talk about it.
