“All alone! Whether you like it or not, alone is something you’ll be quite a lot.”
— Dr. Seuss
I think it’s a pretty common fear, regardless of how popular you were in high school, to worry about making friends in college. There is safety in numbers, and we all had posses in some sense of the word (not necessarily the Regina George Plastics version) that we left behind coming to Dartmouth.
Enter the “shmob.” There is no trait more characteristic and distinguishing of a freshman than the inability to do anything alone. There’s that old joke that girls always have to go to the bathroom with a friend. That may seem so middle-school dance-like, but year after year, freshmen successfully recreate this phenomenon. And it’s not only the inability to enter a basement alone — it’s the inability to go to the gym alone, walk into the first day of class without someone else or wait alone in the Hop grill line.
Freshman year I didn’t like to do anything alone. I didn’t think there was anything worse than making a solitary walk down the FoCo runway — because obviously everyone would be looking, judging me for being alone, right? I wish someone had told me that people don’t actually pay as much attention as we think they do. I was under this strange impression that even though I didn’t give a second thought to others’ solitude, everyone else cared about mine.
It’s impossible for me to classify my freshman year as anything but the antithesis of independent. I was proud of myself for going 500 miles away from home for school, for successfully learning how to do laundry by myself and for only calling home a couple of times a week. In my mind, that’s what independence was. I was checking off boxes and thought it all added up. Yet in no way did my freshman-year self fit anywhere under the umbrella of independence.
There was security in surrounding myself with other people, whether or not they had values and lifestyles that aligned with my own. Others gave me a sense of validation, a reassurance that I belonged at Dartmouth and that how I spent my time was beneficial. I recognized that I was becoming a different person than I was in high school, and I assumed that just came with the territory of my newfound, so-called independence. I was trapped in the Dartmouth happiness bubble, and in my mind, I equated being in a group with being happy.
I can’t pinpoint the moment when I realized how silly I was being and got over myself. Because that really is what it was — getting over my idea that for some reason, people who I didn’t know and didn’t know me were giving me more than a passing glance if I ever dared to undertake an activity alone. And I’m not implying that people don’t care about everyone else in the Dartmouth community, because I think they do. I just wish that I had figured out long ago that it’s not all about sizing up people from afar.
I don’t have some clichéd story about how my off-term working in D.C. or my study abroad in Madrid showed me what real independence was, because I don’t think that either of those experiences were any more formative than the terms I spent in Hanover. Though I think pursuing opportunities outside your comfort zone are crucial to becoming a more grounded, confident person, it doesn’t take an adventurous term to become more independent. Becoming independent is a process of coming into your own in the places you feel most comfortable.
I didn’t wake up one morning and decide that I wanted to be a hermit and end my social interactions with other people. I didn’t decide that my friends weren’t fun or that I didn’t enjoy having company. I just realized that doing things alone didn’t reveal any sort of flaw or abnormality in my personality. For once, I noticed that doing things alone was actually a mark of confidence, a reflection of true independence of which I previously had an entirely misguided perception.
It’s hard to deny that it takes guts to have a solitary meal at a dark side FoCo table during the 6:30 p.m. dinner rush. I still have yet to do that, nor do I think I ever will, but sometimes it’s nice to just leave my phone at home, exit out of blitz and be free from dealing with relationships for a day, or even just a couple of hours.
Getting caught up in the moment is so easy here — there is always so much that you could be doing, or rather, there is always so much that you feel that you should be doing. There is a tendency to go with the grain and make compromises, choosing company when the fact of the matter is, you’d rather be doing something alone. I felt that I occasionally lost sight of myself in the crowd. My self-reliance didn’t come from making new friends, trying new things or forcing myself to follow the norms. I became independent once I realized that I was truly happy with the person I am. Sports and academics defined my high school experience, and realizing, finally, that the world is so much wider than that instilled a sense of adventure in me.
Yes, I’m an economics and Spanish double major, but I have no idea where I want to be in five years. I’m moving abroad next year to serve in the Peace Corps, and most people don’t understand my motivations for that. I’m not looking for validation or approval, though — I’m finally making decisions for me. Security may come from enjoying the anonymity of being just a face in a group, but I have learned that there is also security in self-confidence.
Confidence is a state of mind; you can find more comfort in your own strengths and abilities than in what other people can provide for you. It took me until this term, my senior spring, to realize one very basic thing: the reason you have friends is because people think that you are someone with whom they’d like to spend time. And if other people think that, then you should, too.
As Dr. Seuss so tactfully stated, the person you are ultimately going to spend the most time with in your life is yourself. I think that people rarely frame that statement’s sentiment in a positive light. It’s a positive feedback cycle. Once I broke free of my ridiculous aversion to being alone and my complementary fear of judgment, I realized that independence stems from self-confidence and, simultaneously, self-confidence stems from independence.
Cohen is a member of The Dartmouth staff.
