I think Winter term feels like more of a fresh start than Fall, particularly when we've been away from Hanover for over a month. There's a new year on the calendar, and the cold is a jarring reminder of our vitality. We've made our yearly bids for self-improvement, and as any recent gym patron frustrated at the lack of available treadmills could tell you, so far we're sticking to them.
Resolutions are curious little pledges. Excited by the hopeful, glittery acknowledgement of the passage of time, we reflect on past experience and attempt to improve ourselves for the future while we still can. Some people one of whom is writing a column titled "The Dartmouth Bucket List" might compare New Year's resolutions to a bucket list, a group of promises we make to ourselves in order to enrich our lives, at Dartmouth or forever.
Personally, I have resolved to finally memorize my Hinman box combination and to stop using q-tips to clean my ears (you can make yourself deaf!). The third most common resolution, according to a poll from the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, was to "be a better person." I suppose I should do that, too.
But that specific goal which fell behind perennial favorites like losing weight and exercising more got me thinking about what it might mean to "be a better person" and what Dartmouth could do to improve its people. I don't pretend to possess any moral authority, but it would seem that The Mirror has bestowed bucket list authority upon me. Thus, I would humbly like to present some New Year's resolutions, or a bucket list for being better people at Dartmouth.
First: Look up. Let's pull our heads out of our iPhones when we walk across the Green. Let's make eye contact with each other. Notice the way the glittering snow makes the sky seem bluer. Let's not try to make ourselves look less alone by appearing engrossed in a blitz from the campus events listserv.
In class, let us watch our professors, not our Ebay bids or our email. Look up at the breathing human standing in front of us telling us something important about the world. Let's look at the person we're talking to in Collis, or in a basement, and not over his shoulder for someone else.
Let us free ourselves from those modifiers attached to our names when we're brought up in someone else's conversation, the labels that signify what we should be doing and who we should be doing it with.
Labels are devices used to make sense of the world. Let's prevent anyone from making sense of us. In "A Tale of Two Cities," Charles Dickens called it "a wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other."
Speaking of Dickens, maybe we should read more. Something outside Reddit, our Facebook and Twitter feeds and our blogs. An article, a short story, a poem; a few sentences from one of those. Reading is humanizing; it breeds empathy.
Let's increase our attention spans. Let's drink a little less. But seriously, let's look up, while we're here.
The Bucket List activities resume next week.
