Between the crisp air and steady rhythm of students crossing the Green, campus settles into a leisurely pace on Saturdays. For many, it’s just another weekend. But for a select few, it’s a long-awaited relief because their romantic partners have finally arrived for a visit.
For students in long-distance relationships, visits from their partners interrupt the term with brief windows of comfort. Although such visits require substantial logistical planning, for many students, they are more than worth it.
Zachary Lopes ’29 and his girlfriend, who attends St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., have planned frequent visits this term. He traveled to Manchester once, while she visited Hanover twice — during Homecoming and Halloweekend.
“It’s kind of tough in a 10-week term, especially freshman fall, where I’m joining clubs and trying to hang out with the freshmen and the upperclassmen, but I’m also trying to go out and figure out the social scene for myself,” Lopes explained. “But it definitely was a positive experience overall.”
While Lopes is still finding his rhythm, some older students have learned how to navigate their long-distance relationships over time.
Atticus Belcher ’28 and his girlfriend, who attends the University of South Carolina, have adjusted to their long distance relationship over the past year. He described their situation as “not ideal,” but they’ve tried to make the best of their situation. Their visits require a good amount of coordination and compromise, where each person must “make sacrifices” when it comes to travel and scheduling.
No matter the distance, visits are rarely spontaneous. In order to see each other, Belcher said he plans visits months in advance.
“We don’t really have the liberty of arranging around a special occasion, because it’s impossible for us to go visit each other while we’re in school,” he noted.
Between his girlfriend’s semester schedule and Dartmouth’s quarter system, Belcher said he generally visits her “twice a year in South Carolina,” while she visits him “once a quarter.” For her, the trip from Columbia, S.C. to Hanover is “an all-day ordeal.”
“You have to deal with layovers, you have to deal with waiting on the coach [and] deal with driving here on the coach,” Belcher said. “I really am thankful that she’s willing to do it.”
Shaon Anwar ’28 said that he and his girlfriend, a student at Cornell University, have been dating for over a year and a half and have gotten better at navigating long-distance.
“The beginning kind of sucks,” Anwar said. “Especially if you’ve been together for quite a bit of time before going [to college], because it’s a big change.”
According to Anwar, the start of college — and even the beginning of each term — often bring renewed difficulties. He said that returning to school after extended breaks inevitably requires a period of readjustment. However, Anwar added that as time goes on, routines and expectations begin to fall into place.
“We get to each other pretty frequently,” Anwar said. “Because the D-Plan overlaps pretty nicely with other schools’ vacations, if one of us has a longer break, we’ll definitely make it work.”
Typically, both Anwar and his girlfriend rendezvous in New York to visit each other, rather than visiting one another’s respective campuses.
After the logistics have been ironed out, visits offer partners a glimpse into Dartmouth’s campus culture. For Lopes, hosting his girlfriend included sharing pieces of his daily life.
“We did a big tour of campus,” he said. “She was just really blown away with how pretty the campus was. And, she thought it was gonna be a lot smaller than it actually was.”
Still, the experience of showing her around reminded him of how much he had yet to explore himself.
“I feel like I’ve done a pretty decent job of exploring campus, but I haven’t really gone out into town and explored activities out there,” Lopes admitted. “I don’t really know much other spots in town, so I definitely would like to figure that out.”
As students progress through college, visits often change to reflect their changing class years and growing commitments.
“I’m [in] SAE, so we played pong,” Belcher said. “That was fun. But last year, obviously I wasn’t affiliated … so it was more of her just tagging along with me and my friends. It was a lot more boring, because there just weren’t activities to do.”
According to the students, some visits to Dartmouth are more memorable than others.
“She came for Green Key, which was really fun,” Belcher said. “Green Key is most definitely the best time we’ve had here, just because it’s the best weekend of the year.”
However, visits can be difficult when they conflict with students’ busy schedules.
“She’s come before, during my finals, and she was literally just sitting next to me in the library for six hours a day, and I felt really bad,” Belcher said. “It’s like, ‘oh my gosh, you’re sitting in a library during your break while I’m just sweating away. This is horrible for you.’ So, it’s definitely hard.”
Despite the challenges, Belcher believes that having visits to look forward to makes the distance easier to endure.
“I think long distance gets harder when there’s not an end checkpoint in sight,” he said. “So, when you make those checkpoints, it gets a lot easier to just manage it, take it piece by piece.”
Additionally, Anwar offered a positive spin on the challenges of distance. Rather than being something merely to overcome, he sees it as something that can offer a unique silver lining.
“College keeps you so busy, I think it can be a great outlet, just like a call every night,” he remarked. “It’s kind of like an escape from all the work. You have somebody who has their own life at a different place.”
Lopes shared a similar feeling. Although spotty service sometimes makes communication difficult, he has found ways to make distance feel more manageable.
“The service here is buns,” Lopes said. “At first it was really tough, but I feel like I’m starting to get the hang of it a little bit more. I definitely look forward to the FaceTime’s at the end of the night, just being able to talk to her after a long day.”
For Anwar, Belcher and Lopes, distance doesn’t diminish connection. Instead, relationships are redefined as both people enter new eras of life.. As each couple finds their own unique way to bridge the distance, visits can turn an ordinary weekend into something quietly extraordinary.
