Our conversation didn't really mean to become about anything serious or deep. In fact, I have found that "life talks" make me tired and that I usually have a better day when I stick to lighter topics, like the new black dress that I just bought for no reason or the good music at dance parties or how awesome the halibut is at Pine. Alas, there are a lot of smart 20-somethings running into each other on this campus. Conversations turning unintentionally toward truly meaningful things, like coping with feelings and the fates of our future post-Dartmouth selves, should be coveted and expected.
I can remember receiving my first D on my college transcript, but the story about receiving my second D (with a citation, go figure) is much more interesting. It was spring break, and I was traveling around Europe on my way to the art history foreign study program, pretending to be totally independent enough to ride trains between foreign countries alone (thanks for the first-class Eurail Pass, Mom). I had just arrived in Berlin when I got the news about my grades on Blackboard. Getting blind-sided is a bad feeling, but looking back and realizing that you were deluding yourself the whole time, that you believed your creative writing professor would forgive the fact that you didn't even turn in the final project, has worse implications. In retrospect, I can say that this double mistake, of not doing my homework and of truly believing that I could fly trans-Atlantically away from consequences, could have been avoided, or at least been made into a single-mistake. I could have admitted to myself, before jet-setting, that I wouldn't get a decent grade on something I didn't turn in. Or I could have sucked it up, pulled an all-nighter and finished the project.
I initially traveled to Europe with a friend from Dartmouth, another smart and good-looking one, and while we were waiting in Boston Logan International Airport, we started talking about finals week. I discussed my unsubmitted project, unaware at this point of the grade, and laced my comments with enough humorous self-deprecation to make myself seem rightfully apologetic and semi-self-aware. My travel buddy listened, like a good friend, and nodded pretty indifferently but with earnest understanding. Then, like a better friend, he said something that made me check myself: "It's not cool to not do your homework." It wasn't a particularly show-stopping observation on my friend's part, or a particularly kind one, but it was a moment that made me truly alter my attitude toward my performance, as a student and as a person, at Dartmouth. I have never forgotten it.
The last three years have not been a series of uninterrupted mistakes and unnecessarily not following through, despite what I may be making it sound like. But the moments when I didn't do my best were important and impacted my life here. It was something where most of my close friends pledged Greek houses and stayed with their extracurricular groups, and I didn't. I quit the one group I belonged to the Decibelles, who, by the way, are a super talented and special group of girls on this campus and I dropped rush. And while having these kinds of associations are by no means critical to having a good college experience, I know that they can be incredibly valuable. So it was up to me to maintain those friendships outside of these groups and create a life for myself a Dartmouth that was, by definition, unlike the traditional Dartmouth experience. I exercised, I reached out to people when they were too busy to make plans and it worked. I focused more on my homework, and I discovered the things that I like to do when I am truly bored a common state, like it or not, for us all. I did the D's to myself, among other stupid things. While I am sorry for not giving my all even to certain nonacademic opportunities, like the a cappella group or the sorority thing, I am not sorry for all of the other opportunities I did take or how I go about my days on campus now. I go to class and truly enjoy myself. I watch good TV shows. I spend copious numbers of my mornings at Dirt Cowboy. Occasionally, I forego class readings for the sake of a long jog. I have learned how to take naps. I go to office hours with my English and art history professors just to check in and hang out. And, sometimes, I still don't meet deadlines. But I am more honest with myself now about my capabilities, my potential and my self-expectations. And I am increasingly coming to find that doing what you want just isn't that difficult, and that going about the day doing things that don't warrant apologies to professors, to peers or to yourself is far better than the alternative.
Back to the beginning, the conversation with my friend under the sun. It rolled on for the better part of an hour. Our tete-a-tete had shifted from being about how good it feels being the oldest ones on campus and the boys we had most recently kissed to wondering how we were going to compartmentalize the last three years of college and making mistakes, in time to apply for jobs and figure out what to do with the rest of our lives. On second thought, figuring out the next six months or so should be sufficient.
In any case, the ability to acknowledge your mistakes and accept them, we decided, is the way to be. And "accepting" here neither means that you block out the things that you do wrong, nor that you sit in your room and think too much about anything that you've ever done wrong. Accepting mistakes, it seems, is contingent on accepting yourself and only the best version of yourself. As someone important named Maya Angelou reportedly once said, "Do the best you can do until you know better. Then when you know better, do better." So whatever you want out of college and however long your current life plan is, I wish you grace when you fall from grace, and I wish you the fortitude, when you screw up, to acknowledge what you did wrong and then get over it, if for no other reason than that the high is in the 70s every day next week. Welcome back to school.
