It’s week four — do you know what your New Year’s resolution is?
If you’re like many people, you probably came back from break with goals for this year. Perhaps you returned for the winter with dreams of finally sticking to that workout schedule or summoning the courage to chat up that love interest you’ve had your eye on for the last term and a half. Maybe you wanted to try a new diet or take advantage of some underutilized campus resource (seriously, does anyone know where the pottery studio is? I still can’t find it). Whatever your lofty aspirations, I can almost guarantee that you’ve already fallen off the wagon, buried under a heap of midterms and unrealistic expectations. You’re in good company — researchers at the University of Scranton found that only 8 percent of people who make resolutions actually stick to them. While I don’t deny that some New Year’s resolutions probably result in positive outcomes, I’m willing to bet that they more frequently feed into a phenomenon I will hereafter refer to as “Dartmouth determinism.”
Anyone who has been around Hanover for a few terms has probably experienced Dartmouth determinism, but I doubt that you think of it by that name. A feeling that arises in the middle to later stages of a term — when your hopes have been dashed, and you become convinced that you simply can’t change your luck. This might occur for any number of reasons, from taking classes that make you miserable or striking out with potential significant others to having a hole blown in your ego during a job search or even performing poorly on the pong table. While there are many drivers of those down-on-Dartmouth blues, our individual reactions to this feeling are fairly standard — we begin to eagerly anticipate not just the end of the particular term, but also the start of a new one in which we’ll be able to turn over a fresh leaf.
Whether you slip on your resolutions or settle into this deterministic mindset, you are unleashing some pretty powerful and depressing forces. Giving up on plans for the new year isn’t all that different from throwing in the towel for a given term. In both cases, you resign yourself to an outcome that might not make you very happy while acknowledging your loss of control over something that clearly matters to you. And once you’re mentally and emotionally convinced of the status quo, it can become a rut that’s virtually impossible to escape.
I am certainly as guilty of this as anyone. During the fall, I was miserable as I slogged through thesis writing, corporate recruiting and extracurricular activities. But instead of trying to dig my way out, I just kept taking the punches. I barely saw my friends or got any sleep, yet I was convinced that this was how things were going to be. Winter was on the horizon, and I started holding out for future happiness instead of trying to pick myself up.
In the same way that nobody makes July or August resolutions, I’d imagine that few have the will to chart a new course in week five or six of the term. But that’s what makes Dartmouth determinism so insidious — those who are afflicted start going through the motions and stop living in the moment. It becomes much easier to focus on what’s wrong, and suddenly weeks or months of Dartmouth have passed. This is all the more devastating when you consider how fleeting our collective time in Hanover is.
If I had a dollar for every time a friend told me how desperately he or she wanted a given term to end, I’d be rich and wouldn’t have had to spend most of the fall looking for a job. This sentiment can be explained away as momentary frustration. It can also lead you to write off an entire term. Perhaps I undervalue how the quarter system forces us to reevaluate and start over, but I’m much more concerned with the time we waste by thinking deterministically. With midterms looming, I urge those who identify with this phenomenon to focus on breaking the cycle. I’ve found that being willing to talk about how you’re feeling is a good first step. You don’t have to wait for a new term to get a new lease on life.
Casler '14 is a former member of The Dartmouth senior staff.
