The end of every term at Dartmouth feels like a reckoning. Finals bring chaos: panicked cramming, desperate office hours, the startling Vox Daily notification reminding you that you’ve overstayed your welcome on 3FB and should really go to bed. The quick pace of these weeks always sparks big questions for me: What am I doing? Will I pass my classes? What do I even want from my life? The finale of sophomore summer, of this momentous chapter of Dartmouth life, only intensifies those feelings. With half my college experience behind me, the pressure to feel certain about who I am, what I want, where I’m going presses heavier on my chest, my lungs, my arms. I’m pinned to the ground. I’ve never been especially religious, but studying for my organic chemistry final has me sending up prayers.
But faith isn’t really what I’ve been circling. I keep returning to my inability to pay attention, not just to schoolwork, but to myself. Earlier this week, my English professor sent us outside for 10 minutes to either run or lie in the grass, the assignment being to notice our bodies. I chose to run. I can’t say I paid much attention to my body, to my breathing or my footsteps or the sweat beading at my temples. The most I felt was the familiar twinge in my left knee, a reminder of an old injury. I was consumed by everything else: the sound of other people’s feet hitting the pavement, fragments of conversation as I passed, students rushing to class, small children tossing a frisbee, a dog sprinting across the Green.
When the first 10 minutes were up, we were told to spend the next 10 writing about what we noticed. People around me bent their heads and scribbled furiously, as if they’d uncovered some insane revelations about their breathing or heartbeats that had never before been put to paper. I kept trying to snap myself into focus, but my attention drifted to my own hands. I never know what to do with them; I never know what to do with my entire self. I catch myself constantly wriggling my fingers, twisting them around, tying myself into knots. I sat in the grass and curled and uncurled my fingers around the pen, then, blank pages in front of me. In that moment, I had nothing reflective to say about my body or my mind. All I could think about was how I’ll never actually see the inside of my own hands. The skin and flesh and bone and blood are all mine, yet hidden from me. I want to know myself in my entirety, but I never will.
Sometimes that desire fades into something closer to mourning. Part of my lack of faith comes from the sheer horror of the world, full of evil I can’t reconcile with the existence of a higher power. I grieve for tragedies I’ll never understand, for suffering that feels both distant and inescapably closer. I also grieve selfishly, turning inward. Maybe my problem is that I pay too much attention to myself. I mourn the smaller, quieter losses: the versions of myself I’ll never be. Sometimes I can’t breathe past all the petty regrets festering inside me. I should’ve been an English major. I should’ve done mock trial in high school. I should’ve stuck with karate instead of quitting after fifth grade. They are inane, rambling bits of nonsense, these minor regrets, and yet my open eyes stay glued to the dark emptiness of the ceiling each night as they buzz around in my brain, holding me back from the quiet of sleep. This isn’t grief in any dramatic sense; it’s more like a reminder that selfhood is always partial, that every choice closes off a hundred others. I’ll never know if I’m making the right one. I’ll never know if there’s another version of me out there who knows herself better because of one tiny different decision.
That image — of the hidden interior, the unknowable whole — lingers. I’m distracted all the time. It feels less like an obstacle and more like the defining feature of being 20, of living in a state of perpetual in-betweenness, not quite an adult but desperately trying to be, uncertain of the future yet constantly pressed to define it. How many more years can I make these excuses for myself?
This week in Mirror, we simply reflect. One writer walks down memory lane, grappling with the difficulty of putting her happiest moments into words. Our two relationship columnists tackle the dilemma of pursuing a romance abroad.
Right now, my life is a cycle of class and lab and the library, punctuated by random basements on Wednesday nights, my almost-daily woccoms, the ritual of cleaning my room only to mess it up again. Each day feels both repetitive and unpredictable, equal parts exhausting and exhilarating. It’s hard to pause and reflect when everything keeps moving, when every hour brings some new distraction — and yet, those distractions are the texture of life itself. I’m grateful for how my life has panned out. Three years ago I would’ve wept with joy had I known what was to come: college, friendships, career opportunities. I would pick this jumbled mental existence again and again.
Maybe that’s the paradox I keep circling. I want desperately to know myself fully, as if selfhood were a puzzle that could be solved with enough time and concentration. But the truth is that life is porous; my attention drifts outward, toward strangers passing me on the sidewalk, toward families picnicking on the Green, toward the fleeting and the ordinary. Distraction isn’t the opposite of reflection but its own kind of practice, a reminder that self-understanding isn’t about arriving as a final, fixed image, but about noticing the fragments that make up a life in motion.
Happy end of summer, Mirror. Notice the fragments. Hold onto them. In this constant drift, maybe that’s as much clarity as we can hope for.
Aditi Gupta ’27 is a Mirror editor from Ridgefield, Conn. She is majoring in Biology with minors in Global Health and English. On campus, she spends most of her time working in a cell biology lab. She hopes to pursue a career that integrates her love for scientific research with her broader academic interests in health and literature.
