I think it is fair to say that most Dartmouth students do not get to have a "first year" of college twice. However, as a transfer student from Cornell University, I have had exactly that experience and it is interesting to compare different facets of these two years. Though my first year at Dartmouth is not complete, after four months on campus I feel as though I have been around long enough to get a pretty good feel for things.
The summer before Cornell was one of great excitement for me inexperienced and overwhelmed as I was with mailings coming in every day about every possible thing, somehow Cornell's pre-orientation trips, called Outdoor Odyssey, were lost in the shuffle. Unlike the DOC First-Year Trips, Outdoor Odyssey does not garner universal participation from the freshman class. Of the 3300 freshmen I lived with last year, I only ever heard from four or five people about their trips. A brief perusal of the Outdoor Odyssey website reveals that in 2009, the program ran a record 23 trips with 183 "trippers." If the 2009 class is comparable in size to the 2011 class, that is a participation rate of merely five or six percent.
Now fast forward to the summer before Dartmouth, and it is like comparing apples and oranges. I was bombarded with emails and news specifically about DOC Trips, told that something like 95 percent of incoming students participated and became sufficiently excited to sign up for one of the many options. I settled on extreme hiking and loaded up the car. My gear, juxtaposed with all the regular old boring dorm supplies, was quite a sight. Three ring binders? Check. Mountaineering framepack? Check. Lined paper? Check. Hiking boots and compass? Check. My friends at home started to wonder if I was really going off to college or simply fulfilling my middle school dream of wandering into the wilderness to live off the land.
The contrasts were only beginning, though. Arriving on campus, the regal old academic brick buildings beside the Green seemed oddly out of place beside the Croo with pink and green hair, dancing on the lawn of Robinson Hall to "Call me Maybe" and "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together." What ensued was not a perfectly blissful four days (3 a.m. wake up time for a hike of Beaver Creek to Mount Moosilauke's Peak? These trip leaders were definitely on a different level than me), but it was pretty close.
The first night, when the Croo members started to give unbelievably detailed instructions on using Advil and Band-Aids, and then broke into a slew of songs, I knew I was going to enjoy Trips.
Everyone on my trip was from different parts of the country, as well as extremely nice and easy to talk with. We hiked parts of the Appalachian Trail, pitched tarps, cooked food together and saw what is arguably some of the most beautiful backcountry in the United States. At Moosilauke Ravine Lodge, I encountered for the first time another one of the rare and elusive transfer students.
I came away from Lodge feeling like I had some real friends, people with whom I would like to talk and eat with once back on campus. As orientation began, I felt that I knew about two dozen people who I was comfortable enough to greet and speak to.
My mom and little sister happened to come to visit near the end of orientation and were amazed that while walking the relatively short distance into town from my dorm, I had four or five people say hello to me and use my first name. While I enjoyed having my mom and sister think I was a flourishing social butterfly, in truth I do not think this experience was all that unusual for people after Trips.
And so with maybe just a little more insight than your average Dartmouth student, I hope I can convey just how special Trips really are to Dartmouth. It is a program which really does set the stage for your next four years.
