Dartmouth has been called a lot of negative things in the last year — racist, classist and sexist, to name a few. These obviously aren’t labels that I want to see attached to the name of my soon-to-be alma mater. But since so much of this term’s campus dialogue has focused on precisely the issues I have listed, I want to draw attention to a different criticism — the alleged deficiency in our community’s academic vitality — and argue that the binary between intellectual and social life is both false and unhelpful. For once, let’s talk about something Dartmouth actually does well, which is to encourage balance between academic and social pursuits.
By now, those who know me have surely heard me complain about my thesis. Last weekend, a friend was kind enough to send a survey out to my fraternity’s Listserv, asking whether the rest of the house was aware that I was writing a thesis, how they felt about my project and if they could describe my topic in three words or fewer. Perhaps I should take this as a sign. To be honest, I should probably be running regressions right now instead of writing this column.
But that’s exactly the point — over the past three terms, my thesis has become so interwoven with the fabric of my life that it takes effort for me not to talk about it. My work has lit an intellectual fire inside me that often keeps me reading and typing late into the night. I get an incredible rush from performing genuinely original research and contradicting previous scholarly wisdom.
At the same time, I have found hours in my day to spend outside of the stacks. I’ve stayed heavily involved in my fraternity, made new friends and kept old ones despite dedicating long hours to my work. Yes, that was a bit of a self-call. But it should also debunk the idea that you can either be “well-rounded” (memories of the college admissions process still give me a visceral reaction to that term) or intellectually stimulated, not both. While not always easy, it is entirely possible to balance academic pursuits and having a social life.
Are there lots of “closet nerds” here? Probably, but I don’t think they’re in the closet because they’re afraid of being branded intellectuals. In reality, I would estimate that only a minority of students actually perpetuates anti-intellectualism. At one end of the spectrum are those who are here for the career that their Dartmouth education is going to get them, and not much else. At the other are those who have come for the journey, for the process of learning and self-discovery that is so particular to your college years. But in the middle is a sizeable chunk of students who see Dartmouth as a mix of ends-means calculations and the opportunity to figure out who they really are.
This quasi-majority may be more silently intellectual — you won’t find them discussing Kant over lunch at Collis — but that doesn’t mean they can’t or won’t engage when given the chance. I’ve been lucky enough to tap into this community in numerous places, from the Government Foreign Study Program in London to my fraternity’s basement.
Moreover, most of us don’t have the mental capacity or patience to be “intellectual” all the time or to log day after endless day in the library. It’s simply unrealistic to expect a consistently extraordinary level of intellectual engagement and commitment from friends and peers.
Ultimately, the mere presence of anti-intellectualism at Dartmouth doesn’t mean that it’s an anti-intellectual place. Perhaps more troublingly, this gap between perception and reality points to a bigger issue in our community — that we’re still really bad at seeing the world in shades of gray. One of the best changes I’ve seen in my time here is the more explicit recognition that there is no single Dartmouth experience, that there’s more to the place than frats, flair and snarky Mirror columns. Similarly, we should acknowledge that nerding out and going out are not mutually exclusive. There are spaces where this crossover happens — you just have to find them.
