During Commencement, my Dartmouth ski coach sent her weekly team email. From her Robinson Hall office overlooking the Green, she wrote that she was “feeling nostalgic … listening to the names of the ’26s being read.”
Cami Thompson, who has coached Dartmouth skiers for almost four decades, began her note: “Congratulations on finishing another term as you work your way through your Dartmouth career. I know the terms are busy, but hopefully you found time along the way to enjoy some moments and connect with other people; that is ultimately what you will cherish when you are done.”
I’ve been thinking about those words ever since.
Dartmouth does an excellent job of celebrating excellence, scholarship and leadership, and diplomas, honors and awards certainly matter. But Commencement made me wonder whether we sometimes overlook the parts of college that matter even more.
I attended graduation to watch several of my teammates receive their diplomas. Beforehand, I read a poignant essay in the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine titled “Worst Day Ever.” Its author described Commencement exactly that way, not because the day was unhappy, but because it marked the end of a place and a life that could never quite be recreated.
Having graduated from high school just a year earlier, I recognized the sentiment. But to me, Dartmouth still feels much more like a beginning. So rather than dwell on the wistfulness of the essay, I simply paid attention to the day.
An hour after the ceremony ended, I passed two members of the Class of 2026 walking down East Wheelock Street. They were still in cap and gown, carrying their senior canes in one hand and bags from The Works in the other.
The image stayed with me. They had probably been to The Works together countless times. Yet none of those ordinary visits would appear on any official record of their time here. Dartmouth will remember them for their achievements; they may remember Dartmouth, at least in part, through moments like that.
The experiences that end up shaping our lives rarely announce their significance while they are happening. They are the van rides with teammates, meals with friends or conversations that stretch late into the evening without anyone noticing the time. In the moment, they feel like the spaces between important things. Years later, they are often precisely what people mean when they say they miss a place.
Back on the Green, graduates lingered, taking pictures, making promises and saying goodbyes that wouldn’t end. The diplomas they carried represented years of rigorous work, and they deserved every bit of the celebration. But what they seemed most reluctant to leave behind wasn’t written on those diplomas.
For thirty-seven years, Cami has watched this cycle repeat itself. Students arrive, compete, learn, graduate and go. She has witnessed more Dartmouth endings than most people ever will. What she has learned, and what she wants us to understand, is that the relationships formed here in the margins of the busiest terms and amid everything else students are trying to accomplish, are what lasts.
The things we spend four years pursuing are not always the things we spend the next forty years remembering.
Cami understood that long before I arrived at Dartmouth. After attending my first Dartmouth graduation, I’m just beginning to grasp what she meant.
Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
