Recently, I’ve spent a lot of time driving through local one-lane highways to find stories for my podcast class. The car I take doesn’t have an aux cord, so as I weave through snow-capped trees, I do a lot of thinking. This week my mind has been wandering to my first-year self: Young, bright-eyed, one foot in front of the other into Mid Fayerweather room 109. During Orientation Week, I sat on my twin XL knowing four things: I wanted to join a comedy group, play club field hockey, go on the London abroad for the English major and, of course, write for Mirror. In amazing news that would shock and delight this version of me, all of these things came true!
But not in the way I imagined. I realized quickly that the club field hockey team had been derecognized, and it was up to me and a group of ’27s to rebuild it. My first year in Can’t Sell Culture, my sketch comedy group, I was so shy I could only speak during “check-ins” at the beginning of rehearsal. London, as it turned out, was much more nuanced than my vision of running through the cold rain as a rom-com frazzled English woman. Mirror has always been pretty great, though.
All of that adjustment doesn’t mean I don’t look back on my first two years at Dartmouth fondly. College, I’ve found, is not about realizing your “dream self,” but realizing the person you truly are. If I had entered and gone through college with my goals fully realized, I don’t think I would have strived for anything more.
Now that I’m back on campus, a lot of the friends I’ve made this winter are younger than me. I don’t know what their dreams for Dartmouth are, but I do know that the freshmen I meet today will be different people in a year. Maybe they’ll discover a new passion. Maybe they’ll find their best friend their sophomore year. Maybe, like me, they’ll discover their love of playing bass guitar in a country band.
Yet, I know there’s much more for me to learn. Heck, I just went to my first Microbrews!
This week in Mirror, writers are chatting with people who know a whole lot more than we do. One writer speaks with a custodian who works in the early morning, and also chats with the record store owner in Hanover. Another writer sits down with Anna Leversee, the program manager at the Dartmouth Center for Social Impact. Two editors return for their cooking column, and Eli and I give advice on how to deal with a boyfriend hanging out with his frat brothers.
Happy Week 5, Mirror! Clear your schedules: all of your friends have comedy/acapella/dance shows this week.
