Like many of our peers, we keep a mental list of all of the big things we need to accomplish at Dartmouth and beyond. Due to this ambitious mental life list, we often think of ourselves as being destined for greatness. College graduation used to seem like a respectable deadline, so one of the strangest things about senior winter has been coming to terms with how far we are from our lofty goals.
Amanda: I have a fondness for making excuses. Usually they sound something like, “I’m sorry I did not do X, for you see, I was napping.” But my friends were not willing to let my excuses prevent me from completing the polar bear plunge, and I promised myself that I would do it.
I really thought I would, too. I’ve spent the past three winters convincing myself that as a senior, I would do anything and everything I could to make my Dartmouth experience as enriched and complete as possible. I was wrong. As the date of the plunge drew nearer, my list of excuses grew longer. This is the final, convincing case I made to my friends:
1. I hate water. Temperature aside, I simply hate water.
2. I despise swimming. This is not because I don’t know how. I used to swim competitively but burned out at age 12 and never really got over it.
3. I am sick. This is true. I swear.
4. I have to run errands. I actually only had to turn in my earth sciences homework to my professor’s inbox by 5 p.m., but I did not disclose this detail to my friends.
5. I no longer want to. Maybe this makes me the worst Dartmouth student ever. I hope it doesn’t.
I think my friends stopped listening and/or taking me seriously after, “I hate water,” but they let it go. I turned in my homework on time, they got a new prof pic/cover photo/Instagram out of the polar adventure, and we all checked something off our senior year bucket lists. For most, it was to do the swim. For me, it was simply to avoid it.
Seanie: One of the few type-A qualities I possess is my fondness for making a good list. There are countless saved in my Stickies from the past few years — a lengthy one from junior fall is poignantly titled “List of things that must be finished instantly or else your academic life will crumble into a pit of doom and be lost forever.” Making lists allows me to feel that I am being vigilant and systematic.
So at the dawn of Winter Carnival, I made a list. I mainly hoped for a more memorable carnival than that of 2011, from which I only remember inexplicably eating a lot of Pringles and doing the Polar Bear Swim on Sunday to redeem the otherwise unremarkable weekend.
Here is my list, made last Thursday and annotated for you now:
- Do the Polar Bear Swim (Done.)
- Shower in the Choates after the Polar Bear Swim (This was a throwback to freshman year, when we thought getting back to the River might kill us, so we showered in the Choates instead. I hope that the ’17s of Bissell 1 enjoyed the rendition of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” coming from the men’s bathroom at 1 p.m. last Friday.)
- Be pulled in the dog sled race. (Completed without success. I specified that my position needed to be inside the sled, but the team did not listen and forced me to be a puller — not my mistake.)
- Occom Pond Party. (An opportunity eclipsed by eating a bagel in bed.)
- Go skiing. (I don’t have ski pants and don’t want to be the next person to blitz out for them. Will someone lend me ski pants?)
- Throw surprise birthday party for my roommate. (My room is now infested with black ants from the cake smashed into the carpet. So far I have conducted several ant massacres with the vacuum. The ants prevail.)
- Get a job. (Okay.)
And so our great big mental life list remains jumbled, wild and unfinished. We look at the things we set out to do and feel disheartened. Then, we see all our unplanned accomplishments and feel a little bit better.
At the end of the day, maybe all the little things we’ve done right or wrong along the way are just cogs in this wheel rolling toward something huge and transformative and self-actualizing.
Or maybe they just are what they are.
Yours in bullet points,
Lucy & Ethel
