I came to Dartmouth envisioning the liberal arts education as an exploratory journey, in which we ask questions of all kinds in search of truth and meaning. Years after graduation, I may forget what the transpose of a matrix is or what the court stands for in Kafka’s “The Trial.” What I hope will stay with me is a critical spirit and a habit of constant reflections. As said by Albert Einstein, “Education is that which remains, if one has forgotten everything [one] learned in school.”
At Dartmouth we take pride in keeping “college” in our name because we value a small liberal arts experience and strong sense of community. When Daniel Webster spoke before the Supreme Court in Dartmouth College v. Woodward, his emotional closing argument etched itself into the spirit of Dartmouth. Webster stated, “It is, sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet there are those who love it.” This small yet refined institution allows me to engage in insightful discussions that broaden my perspectives and challenges me to be more socially engaged. But I have gradually noticed a contradiction in my college experience: We were told to explore freely but also to make something out of it.
I never thought I would describe college as something to “leverage.” But I was convinced during some conversations with my peers that I should “make full use” of this education, treating each experience as a building block of a career narrative and investing my time rather than actually spending it. My peers started recruiting for banking in their sophomore year, not yet sure precisely why they were pursuing it. People started treating classes and job hunting as separate tracks, preparing questions for coffee chats while writing an essay on Hannah Arendt. We are asked to simultaneously achieve worldly success and explore freely as a liberal arts education encourages. This creates a dilemma: Do we design our college journey into a well-crafted resume, or do we take time discovering where our true passion lies? Liberal arts exploration often contradicts what preprofessional culture demands. Liberal arts asks to set aside the outcome and stay with the process, and the latter asks for tangible achievements.
What I see in Dartmouth academic spaces is a fading curiosity about knowledge for its own sake, and a growing tendency of treating knowledge as an instrument. The word “school” is derived from Latin “schola,” meaning leisure or free time. This comes from the fact that ancient Athenian citizens dedicated their free time to thinking and philosophizing. Part of what liberal arts education does is to echo that spirit — to liberate the mind and to encourage reflection.
It might be too big of a question to define what a college education is for in today’s world, but at the very least we need to answer what a Dartmouth education means for ourselves. I remember the term before my gap year, an upperclassman once casually asked me about my plan after graduation. I said, “Maybe continue doing research and apply for grad school, but I am not very sure.” I was then pelted with questions on whether I had any published papers and what top schools I wanted to get into. I’d be lying if I said I don’t want any of that, but at the moment I felt as if I were being denied the chance to share my uncertainties — that I wasn’t completely sure about my future. They assumed someone measured success in college by corporate or academic outcomes, as if I needed to prove my success by obtaining a socially-recognized position. Achievements are worth celebrating, but my four years of college were expected to add up to something, as if liberal arts exploration matters only as a means to worldly achievements.
The questions I received result from a social discourse that treats knowing what you want as a prerequisite for success. The sooner you know what you want, the better you can craft your experience around it, and the further ahead you can get. But “knowing what you want” often means choosing from a narrowly defined list of choices. Who wrote that list? Who decides what a successful Dartmouth graduate looks like? We can’t hastily pursue something only because it has a concrete set of rules or because the evaluation is clear-cut. I understand that sometimes worldly success gives us freedom. Financial independence is, of course, very important, but the educational privilege each one of us enjoys demands us to think beyond our personal success and reflect on what we can contribute. I believe we are more than capable of succeeding, not just for ourselves but for a broader community.
Where should a Dartmouth education lead? I don’t have a complete answer for myself, but it’s a question that we sometimes forget to ask ourselves. In failing to do so, we may be tempted to follow the flock. I wish there were a time when I didn’t need to justify my choices, or be told to follow the same path of success as most people. So, I am putting the question to you: After four years at Dartmouth, what kind of person do we want to be? And are we allowed to not know the answer yet? If this starts a conversation, it will have served its purpose.
Yiran Jiang is a member of the Class of 2026. Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
