This article is featured in the 2025 Commencement & Reunions special issue.
Dartmouth College has given me more than I could have ever asked for. Every day this spring — when I take my lap around Occom Pond — I stroll along like Voltaire’s “Candide” chanting to myself, “We live in the best of all possible worlds.” I am so lucky. I get to live out my mom’s American dream. And yet, like the dog biting the hand that feeds it, I can’t help but wonder what the College could have done to better support students like me.
Like every civically-inclined freshman, my eyes grew wide like saucers the moment I read about the First-Year Fellows program in the course catalog. The program places freshmen who meet specific prerequisites, in public policy-related internships in Washington, D.C., over the summer. Even before I matriculated, I knew I would do my best to fit the bill, completing the Dartmouth Leadership Attitudes and Behaviors Program and enroll in PBPL 5: “Intro to Public Policy.” However, my plan to satisfy all the application prerequisites became disrupted by factors outside of my control. After 10 weeks of countless hours studying for class and participating in DLab, I was notified mere days before the application opened that I was ineligible due to the way the compensation for the program worked. An administrator praised my grace and poise as I fought back tears. I was not offered a solution or alternative. I took a tearful lap around Occom to call my mom and grieve my D.C. dreams. It’s one thing to have your application denied, it’s another thing altogether to be barred from applying in the first place.
The next day, I resolved I would make it to Washington, D.C., another way. After all, Candide kept going. So could I. A little over a year later, I found myself with an engineering internship, living in a high-rise apartment just outside of D.C. Through the government department’s domestic study program, I lived in D.C. while interning and taking a full course load. During a regular term on campus, my QuestBridge scholarship covers my meal plan — I never go hungry unless there’s 11 inches of snow outside and I can’t summon the willpower to leave my room. Although I was technically enrolled in classes and my meal plan should have been in effect, I was told I would have to wait three weeks for the tuition refund to reach my bank account. At the same time, our domestic study program internships were required to be unpaid. Calling home and asking for money that my mom didn’t have to give was not an option. So I spent the first three weeks of my time in D.C. rationing lentils and almonds. Despite growing up in a single-parent household and living well below the poverty line, I had never ever experienced going to bed hungry until then.
Over that term, I unintentionally lost four pounds that I haven’t gained back to this day — which means a lot on a 4’11 frame. When the money finally kicked in, I remember walking to the Lincoln Memorial with a satiated appetite, thinking, “We sure do live in the best of all possible worlds.” Since then, I have kept repeating that mantra to myself over many laps around Occom pond.
This fall, former Vice President Mike Pence visited campus and spoke to the “GOVT 30.17,” the 2024 election class which I was in. He said a few things that surprised me. One salient point he made, that I wrote down in my diary, is that young people today have this warped idea that adversity builds character when all adversity does is reveal character. There is no reason I had to be disqualified from First-Year Fellows or that I had to go hungry in D.C. — with more institutional support, I could have participated in these programs like all of my other classmates. Those formative challenges, though, have shown me that if I look closely enough, I can always find some alternative winding path to my dreams.
While I have experienced no shortage of adversity at the College, I have also been incredibly fortunate in my relationships and academic opportunities. In fact, many of the wonderful experiences I have had on this campus have been through mere coincidence. I could not imagine my life today without Lily Easter ’25, who was my randomly-assigned roommate my freshman year. Over freshman winter, when I insisted on locking myself away in the library, she begged me to visit Boston with her. Our dynamic hasn’t changed since then. Lily has taught me to make the most of my life. Because of her, I host dinner parties and surprise my friends with watercolor paintings or tres leches cake. I wouldn’t be who I am today without her, and I only have Dartmouth to thank for bringing her into my life. I live in the best of all possible worlds because Lily is around to make it so. Every day of my senior spring, I have taken a walk around Occom to slow down the breakneck pace of life. Occom no longer represents the place on campus I would go to hide away when the world felt unfair. Now it is the place I go to contemplate and plan for the future ahead.
My intent at Dartmouth was always to major in government, but my second major in computer science came about by another mere coincidence of a lab distribution requirement. Through a stroke of luck, I took my first computer science class with Professor Alberto Li, who was determined to hear out hesitant and unsure voices, like my own, amidst louder male voices in class. Without his support, I might not have double majored. Professor Lisa Baldez in the government department believed in my vision to find a computer science and government related internship even when I had reservations. Professor James Murphy wrote in his comments for my paper on Plato’s conception of citizenship that he’d vote for me if I ever ran for public office. The Dartmouth newspaper has given me a voice as a news writer and allowed me to amplify marginalized voices on campus. I am so proud of the work and effort I have invested into this student paper.
This campus gave me a seat at the table and access to opportunities I never could have imagined. I am eternally grateful to live in the best of all possible worlds. If it wasn’t clear up until now, I am aware that Voltaire is satirizing Candide’s blind optimism. I understand that Voltaire would love for us all to “cultivate our own garden” and distance ourselves from the suffering in the world. I won’t do that now — or ever. I’m not blindly optimistic, but instead stubbornly optimistic. I have no choice. I have to believe that the world will get better for students like me. I have to reframe every obstacle I face with Candide’s optimism because otherwise I’d never get anywhere. During my first years at the College, I walked around Occom to grieve dreams deferred and process my many disappointments. Over my senior spring, Occom has become a center of joy. I know I have come a long way just by being on Dartmouth’s campus, but a college education is just the starting line. I hope my many stumbles and missteps clear the way for others in my shoes to have an easier time spotting the winding paths like the one I have made for myself on campus. In the future, students like me should be better supported so that their walks around Occom carry gratitude for the beauty of this campus, instead of escape.
Arizbeth Rojas is a former News Managing Editor of The Dartmouth and a member of the Class of 2025.
Arizbeth Rojas ’25 is a managing editor of the 181st directorate from Dallas, TX. When she’s not listening to DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ or planning her next half marathon, you can find her munching on a lox bagel.
