This fall, I served as an Orientation Leader for the second time. Compared to last year, I felt that incoming freshmen took me more seriously: In their eyes, I am a rising junior, more experienced and capable than a sophomore. Is that actually true, though?
I could definitely help the new students navigate the course election process, give them directions to Collis or tell them where Spanish classes usually take place. However, there is a lot I still haven’t figured out, even more than halfway through my college experience, and I am okay with that. Despite a collective sense of urgency on campus that might say otherwise, I think new students definitely don’t need to have any of it figured out yet.
During New Student Orientation, a student in the Class of 2030 told me that he needed to take a lot of economics and math classes to enter the consulting or finance pipeline. It made me think about how it wasn’t until my sophomore fall that I realized careers like investment banking and finance have to be started way earlier than you think, as you might be applying for junior summer internships in your sophomore fall. External forces push freshmen to start early, but these freshmen also pressure themselves to have everything figured out.
Another moment that stuck with me was when an international student said they were concerned about having a heavy accent when speaking English. Having lived in the U.S. for almost three years now, I not only still think I have an accent in English, I also still struggle with the language itself at times. My grammar gets tangled, especially after a long day, and I sometimes might have to repeat what I want to say. Once, during COSC 1: “Introduction to Programming and Computation,” I forgot what a prime number was in English. I remember blushing and feeling ashamed after asking for an explanation from a friend.
There seems to be a strong desire for students to have everything figured out before they’ve even officially matriculated. When your newly-enrolled classmates say they want to study engineering or economics or English during New Student Orientation, and you don’t know what you want to major in, that can bring anxiety.
However, as much as the ’30s may have thought of me as “having everything figured out,” I am still figuring out my college experience as I go, and I made sure to tell them so. During my sophomore summer, I realized that having a major and double minor isn’t for me, since there are too many classes I want to be able to take out of pure interest. So, I dropped the two minors — human-centered design and international studies — I had chosen two years ago, and I decided to pursue a minor in anthropology instead, because two classes I had taken prior interested me so much, and because I’m doing a Foreign Study Program through the anthropology department this winter. I also realized that I wanted to pursue a different concentration within my Cognitive Science major, so I switched it from computational cognitive science to cognitive science of design.
I came to Dartmouth thinking college was about exploration, reading lengthy books and having thoughtful discussions. To my surprise, most people — including myself now, most of the time — tend to treat college as a game to be played: recruiting, coffee chats, Handshake, networking and many more words that didn’t make sense until months into freshman year.
As I’ve spent more time here, I’ve felt myself absorbing that mindset like a sponge, silencing what I truly wanted. When I visited home this summer, I told my family that I felt this weird rush at Dartmouth. Being surrounded by ambitious people pushes me to work hard, but the curse is that it also leads to comparison and self-consciousness. The rush I feel can overshadow the simpler moments I experience at Dartmouth: going on Woccoms, hiking Mount Cardigan, a spontaneous trip to Maine with friends. I don’t want to just lock myself inside and work on career goals that never end. As my junior year begins, I want to enjoy the smaller moments. I’m a little burned out from thinking about “the next thing.”
What I ultimately came to realize is, when I look back at my previous years at Dartmouth, certain smaller moments stand out in my memory. From running around the Bonfire to an interfaith trip to New Mexico in freshman year, these memories carry so much more importance than the decisions about what internship to apply for or if a grade in a class would destroy my GPA.
I recently stumbled across a quote by Oscar Wilde: “If you want to be a grocer, or a general, or a politician, or a judge, you will invariably become it; that is your punishment.” I hope we can normalize that all of college is about exploration, and it doesn’t have to end when Orientation Week ends. I understand that in freshman year, it feels like college is a long, four year journey. Maybe we should remove timelines and deadlines when we talk to freshmen. Instead of saying “you’ll make friends by your freshman winter” or “you’ll figure out your major by your sophomore fall,” we should assure them that everyone’s process and experience is and will be different.
