At Dartmouth, life moves at breakneck speed. We’re booked by the hour, sleeping in the stacks and studying in the KAF line, but as long as things go according to plan, we manage.
That’s the catch: life almost never goes according to plan. When a loved one or a community member dies, we seldom see it coming, and even then, we can’t know how we’ll react. The grief associated with these events inevitably upturns our day-to-day lives.
As a community, we were reminded of this early in February, when Torin Tucker ’15 passed away during a cross-country ski race, leaving his fellow students, friends and teammates in a state of turmoil. The night of College President Phil Hanlon’s campus-wide blitz, grief counselors were available in Robinson Hall. That Wednesday, the College held a highly attended memorial service in Rollins Chapel.
But soon, too soon, we had to return to the daily routine. Carly Wynn ’15, Tucker’s close friend and teammate, said that while she received support and flexibility from her professors and dean, assignments forced her to resume her normal life as soon as the memorial service had ended. With terms lasting only 10 weeks, keeping up after missing just a few classes can be impossible.
“I felt like I didn’t have time to be sad anymore,” Wynn said. “Assignments and exams don’t really wait for anybody.”
Krystyna Oszkinis ’14, who lost her father to cancer during her freshman fall, also said she found it impossible to fit grief into her relentless Dartmouth schedule. Though her dean offered her accommodations, she said she had to drop a class just to stay afloat.
“In reality, the classes move on if you get behind,” she said, “and you never really fully catch up.”
More than our academics suffer when we grieve at Dartmouth. We strive all term to find a rhythm that lets us eat, sleep, study and socialize in equal parts. When we lose a loved one, we can’t possibly stay on beat. Yet when we try desperately to do so, we marginalize our emotional wellbeing in the process.
Oszkinis did not tell many people when her father died, so she said being at Dartmouth made it easy to avoid thinking about her loss.
Instead of grieving, she jumped back into the social scene, classes and campus life. And her reaction was natural — it makes sense that our first priority is to jump back into the swing of things. In the immediate wake of a loss, some find it easier to keep busy and get things done until they are ready to actually stop and feel. The problem occurs when we are finally ready to process, as the pace of life at Dartmouth doesn’t give us room to pause.
Oszkinis did not fully grieve until her junior year. She was sitting in Fahey Hall, listening to a Soul Scribes poem about the death of a family member, when she broke down sobbing.
“It was the first time I cried since my dad died,” Oszkinis said. “Since then, I’ve been able to cry again, and I think that’s good and healthy.”
Wynn said that though Dartmouth’s fast pace can actually help people move forward after a tragedy, the speed of terms lets us stifle our emotions instead of facing them.
The day before an organic chemistry exam his sophomore fall, Yobi Kelati ’15 found out that his mother was in the hospital. He sat down on the floor of his study room, told his professor he could not make it to the exam, then packed his things and left. He found out his mother had passed away not from his family, but from a neighbor who called to offer condolences before Kelati’s relatives had the chance to tell him what had happened.
Kelati said that he quickly threw himself back into his regular activities to maintain a sense of normalcy and did not give himself enough time that fall to fully process his grief.
“I was trying to keep up with this aggressive Dartmouth mentality of keeping your shit together despite what’s going on in your life,” he said. “I should have taken the time for myself to recover emotionally.”
Though he wishes he had given himself more time to process, Kelati said his support network, from new fraternity brothers to long-term friends, went above and beyond for him.
“I could not have grieved alone,” he said. “It was not possible.”
There is no one right time to process the loss of a loved one, but Sandi Caalim ’13, who has lost multiple family members and friends during her time at Dartmouth, emphasized the importance of taking time to grieve.
“I feel like here at Dartmouth, we don’t have enough time to even sit down and feel any emotions,” Caalim said. “Over the years, I’ve learned to just press pause and do me for a little bit.”
Caalim balances a heavy course load with extensive extracurricular involvement in the Center for Gender and Student Engagement and Ujima dance troupe, but that doesn’t stop her from taking a step back from her daily grind when she needs to.
“A group is still going to run,” she said. “Maybe some of the members might freak out for a hot second ... your well-being and your health are going to take you so much further.”
Not everyone is able to slow down and face their grief. Maybe that’s because, as Caalim said, “there’s a vulnerability when it comes to pausing.” When we stop to process, we don’t just fall behind academically. We also open ourselves up to the very real possibility of pain, sorrow and, above all, uncertainty.
During my Dartmouth Outing Club first-year trip this fall, my grandmother passed away. I spent the week between trips and orientation preparing for her funeral and then, without skipping a beat, launched into life at Dartmouth. My grandmother barely crossed my mind until I booked my flight home for the holidays and realized she wouldn’t be there.
My grief hit me just as I was given a six-week break to process my emotions. I got lucky.
More often, the timing doesn’t work out. Instead, we face a trade-off between academic and social success and emotional health. Moving on quickly helps us cope in the moment, but it also stops us from processing.
This isn’t to say that being at the College during hard times is all negative. Everyone I spoke to assured me that their communities at the College were essential to their emotional health and ability to manage as they grieved.
When we lost Tucker, Wynn said the student body, faculty and staff truly came together.
“The campus felt a lot smaller at that time,” she said.
For those seeking a community, Actively Moving Forward offers an outlet by bringing together students who wish to discuss their grief. Kara Dastrup ’14, the organization’s co-president, said such a community is especially important in light of Dartmouth’s fast pace.
“I always leave it happy,” she said. “It’s emotional, but the point isn’t to wallow. The point is to actively move forward.”
No matter how it happens, grief shakes our foundations and floods our lives with uncertainty. But even if life at Dartmouth won’t pause when we need it to, the individuals in our lives will. Stopping to feel during a Dartmouth term can seem impossible, but when we finally do, the communities we’ve found here will stand behind us.
The article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction appended: March 7, 2014
Due to an editing error, the initial version of this story said that Yobi Kelati'15 emailed his professor, which is incorrect. Instead, he spoke to his professor in person. The story has been revised to correct the error.
