My Dartmouth has been defined by unexpected adventures and little moments of sincerity and joy gallivanting around the Upper Valley on car rides with no real destination, realizing that I've become friends with someone who I will probably know my whole life and having conversations that can simultaneously challenge the way I think and make me laugh so hard I cry. Those are the moments that make Dartmouth so special to me.EMILY FLETCHER
The amount of absurd things I have done and risks that I have taken for the sake of the story. I have a post-it note on my computer that I update constantly, called, "Weird things @ Dartmouth." That post-it note, with all of its memories and the people that created those memories, defines my Dartmouth. PRIYA KRISHNA
My experience at Dartmouth can only be defined by variety. Each term has had a completely different feel, but I've learned to welcome it. During my freshman year, I was heavily involved in the music department, whereas by my junior year, my life was completely consumed by working for The D. Now, it involves a lot more pong and a lot more crying about graduation and my life being over soon. Pity me.JAY WEBSTER
On nearly every weekday for the last two years I've eaten lunch with a group of friends at one of the large round tables upstairs in FoCo. It hasn't always been exactly the same people. The conversation isn't always that intellectual, or even polite table talk. And despite our best efforts, we haven't managed to permanently claim a specific table. But in sickness and in health, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, lunch has always happened upstairs at FoCo. I'll leave behind a lot of things that have defined "my Dartmouth" my professors, my church, this newspaper, my fraternity, to name a very few but I think if I were to say what really defines Dartmouth for me, I'd point to this lunch table. Because what really defines Dartmouth for me, in all of those other things too, are people. And the purest, richest expression of this, for me, is nothing more than friends sitting down every day to break bread and talk about life.
Because this really isn't just my Dartmouth. It's everyone else's too. And lunch upstairs always helps me remember that. STEPHEN KIRKPATRICK
My academic, extracurricular and personal life at Dartmouth has been a turbulent, frantic journey of self discovery. It is hard for me to define my Dartmouth because this school has changed with me each year, term and day. Even my definition of change has morphed as my academic pursuits have led me to study Chinese philosophy, language and culture. Compared to the Western way of thought in which change is a direct result of a physical cause, in Eastern philosophy change is the only constant and everything is in a constant state of rebalancing. As senior year is ending and the countdown to graduation seems to unearth all of these moments of self-reflection, I have been frequently questioning whether I have changed as a person. I really doubt that I'm going to figure this out before I leave Hanover, or any time soon for that matter, but I am definitely less confused than I was four years ago.CASEY AYLWARD
What I will miss the most when I leave Dartmouth is the incredible people I get to meet and interact with every day. Starting from freshman orientation to the last weeks of senior spring, I have continued to meet some of the most talented, thoughtful, diverse, interesting and just plain old cool people in my life. I have not agreed with the opinions of everyone I have met here, and I certainly have not personally liked everyone I have met at Dartmouth. However, I have found that everyone here has a worthwhile story to tell. If I just stopped and paid a little bit of attention, I can probably learn from everyone here things that I will never be able to learn inside a classroom or in the professional world. I want to thank all of you who have taken the time to teach me the truly valuable lessons in life you have defined my Dartmouth. DONG ZHAO
At the beginning of my senior winter, someone asked me if I had found my passion at Dartmouth. I hadn't, and six months later, I still haven't. My Dartmouth has been a path of self-discovery (it's college!), unimaginable happiness and anguishing loss. I can't pinpoint the people or experiences that define my Dartmouth, but I can say with confidence that it isn't where I've found my singular, ultimate passion, if I even have one. Please don't read this as pejorative it's a good thing. I don't know where I'll be or what I'll be pursuing in five years at this point, my five-year plan is to not die alone and to own no cats but that's okay. Over the past four years, I've found what I need to keep going, to keep searching for my ever-elusive passion, whatever that word means. I've learned most about myself in my time here, which sounds clich and selfish and lame, but is nonetheless true. I know what I need to be happy good friends and, sometimes, a long nap, among other things and I've been fortunate enough to be happy for most of my time here. I'm going to stop myself before I begin to wax nostalgic. I'll end with this: my Dartmouth experience has been rich with laughter and conversation, but just as I can't define my passion at this time, I don't think I have enough perspective to really define my Dartmouth. Ask me again in six months.ANGIE YANG
