Long time no see, Mirror! It’s Aditi.
I spent the summer living in my hometown. It was a sweet, slow summer, marked by long, lazy drives, nighttime trips for fresh peach ice cream with chocolate sprinkles in a waffle cone, dripping red juices from tomatoes and strawberries in my mother’s garden. I lived through remote workdays in my backyard, staring up at the sun, counting tiny green frogs leaping through potted plants and cherries eaten and days until my return to the speed of life on campus.
Being home, I had plenty of time to tackle the looming task of sorting through the junk I’ve accumulated and dumped in my childhood bedroom over the last 10 or so years. I donated my middle school graduation dress and AP Biology textbook. I keep my high school graduation cap and prom dress. I found my high school senior shirt stuffed at the back of one of my drawers. I’ll obviously never wear it again, but I kept it, folding it neatly and tucking it back into my dresser.
Eventually I’ll sort through my Dartmouth memorabilia in the same way. It’ll be Thanksgiving and I’ll find myself sitting at home with nothing to do but declutter. I'll sift through photos and graduation cords and free t-shirts and decide what’s worth keeping and what to throw away. I can’t describe the feeling I get when I think about that not-too-distant future. But I have one year left to collect more Dartmouth memories, one year until the words on this page find themselves shoved in a drawer somewhere, waiting to be rediscovered.
Hi Mirror, it’s Leila!
The best thing that has ever happened to me was that my work this summer started at 10 a.m. instead of 9 a.m. Every day I would board the 30-minute train to Grand Central, walk to Lexington Avenue and make a left towards the Chrysler Building. Inside I’d fight for a seat at the same coffee shop, order the same drink and receive the same card telling me what type of coffee bean they used.
I tried to get there at 8:50 a.m. so I could leave an hour later with 10 minutes to walk to work a few blocks away. And during that time, I would write.
I have always assumed that in order to write you needed some sort of end goal or purpose, like a class assignment, journal entry or even a newspaper article. I had never practiced writing as a time of day rather than a task to complete. So, with an hour to kill at a time of day when there’s not much else to do than listen to work colleagues meeting over coffee, I wrote fiction stories. Most of them were loosely based on the subpar novellas I’d read on Kindle Unlimited on the train ride over. I had no intention of ever showing anyone these stories — they were mainly fragments of 10 to 15 pages, anyway — yet as I was thinking about what to take for my final fall at Dartmouth, I thought about that sacred time, what came to be my favorite part of the day.
I used to think that I had to take a fiction class if I wanted to write fiction. I didn’t trust myself enough to carve out that time for myself with no one to read it, peer review it or grade it. And I thought that a term without a creative writing class was a term wasted. Now I know that is not the case.
Happy week 1, Mirror, and a special hello to the new ’30s that just arrived on campus, lounging in the sterile, pristine, glass-encased fishbowl that is the new Fayerweather common room.
Welcome back, Mirror! It’s Vivian.
After being “off” last winter, abroad in the spring and “off” again in the summer, I’m back taking classes on campus for the first time in a while. There’s a lot I’ve missed about Dartmouth: the start-of-fall greenness of the trees, the feeling of always being in a slight rush because my schedule is packed with commitments I am passionate about and, of course, Mirror.
But the thing I’ve probably missed the most is also something that I’ve found so easy to take for granted: having the opportunity to run into friendly faces everywhere, from my closest friends to acquaintances I just met earlier that day.
These past few days especially, I’ve remembered how nice it is to so easily talk to a friend, whether I’m walking to Foco, sitting in Blobby or leaving the Hop after class. Those moments — whether it’s just a wave or a long, tight hug — often leave me with a smile and feeling just a little lighter.
The convenience of these moments is a luxury — one that exists because of our small population and campus size, and one I will no longer have in less than a year.
In any medium to big-sized city, it requires a rather miraculous alignment of several stars to run into just one friend unexpectedly, let alone multiple. To put it in less flowery language, there will be no guarantee of human connection simply by leaving my residence.
So, while I’m still here, where I’m as close to guaranteeing it as I might ever be, I want to make sure I don’t let myself take it for granted. And even if you don’t recognize as many familiar faces yet, I hope you too take the time to appreciate when you do see those people who make your day just a little better.
This week in Mirror, we examine both past and present. One writer explores the history of the Rassias drill method. Another writer reflects on the pressures of knowing what comes next.
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.
Vivian Wang ’27 is a Mirror editor and writer from the California Bay Area pursuing majors in Psychology and Music. In addition to journalism, she enjoys experimenting with storytelling in its many other forms, from arranging music to playwriting.
