The Dartmouth Bucket List
Earlier this week, I extemporaneously ran a half-marathon.
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Earlier this week, I extemporaneously ran a half-marathon.
The recent increased corporate presence on Main Street Hanover inspired me to explore some of the town's oft-forgotten small businesses before they get replaced by a Pottery Barn or even worse a second Starbucks. I wanted to explore the unexplored, as good old Bob Frost might encourage. Plus, if these places get busted as drug fronts, I can say I've been there. And at this point in most people's Dartmouth careers, there are only so many times you can go to a classic spot like Molly's, though I'm actually really into Molly's right now because I recently came of the legal age to enjoy margs.
The Great Vermont Corn Maze does not mess around. Four friends and I arrived at the maze in Danville 20 minutes after the maze's "last entry" at 2 p.m. They require arrival at least two hours before closing to leave yourself adequate time, and we joked that if necessary, we'd run through it to get out by 4 p.m.
Recent fall rain pushed me inside and in pursuit of another establishment to add to my personal, college career-spanning diner tour. I ended up at Shyrl's, an easily overlooked dive on the side of Route 4 in West Leb, splitting a vegetable omelet and French toast. More on that later. I realize not everyone has a passion for pancakes or an available vehicle to embark upon their own diner ventures. However, in addition to being delicious, the diners of the Upper Valley are worth visiting for the insights into the communities that they serve. For your convenience, I've gone through my working diner repertoire and personified each spot so you can decide what's worth visiting.
Let's be honest: The last week sucked in many ways. Women's rush, resume drop deadlines, nighttime temperatures below 40 degrees it's been a lot to handle. And I don't mean to get all contemplative again, but I think everyone (except '16s: No offense, but those Writing 5 papers don't make the cut on that list) needs a moment to breathe. Breathe! I say. Don't sprint to an available basement for harbor at 4 p.m. the day you finish your obligations, though that's cool sometimes. But sit for a moment. Look at your life, look at your choices, look at the wall. It's hard to think at Dartmouth. Which is obviously ironic. But between classes, teams, clubs, resumes and Greek houses, there is little time to think about yourself, about your decisions and their consequences, about your future or even to not think at all when this other crap is dominating your cranium. So this week, I sought the rumored Hanover meditation garden.
If you decide not to live with friends when room draw rolls around, your remaining options are: live with an enemy, live with a rando or live alone. The first two options are obviously not great. Sharing a room with someone you don't know is a gamble, and things can get awkward when you don't know someone's habits and preferences or when you don't like them. Living alone can be relaxing and regenerative, but it is usually never described as "fun." At Dartmouth, I have lived exclusively with friends, and you could say my culminating experience in this area is the 10-person off-campus house I'm sharing this year with nine friends and the occasional squirrel. Maybe I'm overcompensating for my childhood as a "lonely only" whose primary playmates were her cat and mother, but I think that living with friends is the only way to live in college for the following reasons:
I didn't think I would ever make it to the Second College Grant as an undergrad until I was assigned to lead canoeing for DOC Trips at the end of the summer. Initially excited to see Dartmouth's casual extra 27,000 acres of forest, I grew nervous when Grant Croo informed my group that it was moose mating season. I prayed to Daniel Webster that the horny moose would have mercy on us.
To examine Dartmouth's history is to observe that the College is resistant to change. Probably the most momentous example of this reactionary behavior was in response to one of the largest changes at Dartmouth: the admittance of women beginning in 1972. The signs telling "co-hogs" to go home, the ranking of girls as they entered Thayer Dining Hall we've all heard the horror stories of the actions of the loud, dissenting contingent of men on campus. Recently, Dartmouth has been beset with change the new Fall term schedule, a new dining plan and facility, new alcohol and hazing policies and the loss of a president, to give a few highlights.
It was a confluence of personal and cultural factors that eventually brought the idea for this column. Let's go back to last fall. Rapper and redeeming Canadian Drake releases the hit, "The Motto." "YOLO," the acronym for "you only live once," the motto referred to by the song's title, becomes common in youthful parlance and a widespread excuse for misguided behavior.
Or, you might have been studying the ORC for months and carefully making spreadsheets filled with course descriptions and professor credentials. I hope you made it to prom.
Let's get hypothetical. Let's say you had some children a boy and a girl. Let's say they were smart, and they got into Dartmouth. Oh, and let's also assume that the essential structure of the College is the same, as in Greek life still exists because it already has for over a century and a half.
Dartmouth students care an incredible amount about wooing prospective students, so much so that we've even mastered meteorological control for the weekend of Dimensions of Dartmouth, as evidenced by the 20-degree increase in temperature as prospective students flocked to Hanover last weekend. Students and the Admissions Office put a lot of work into the weekend to show that we're not a bunch of uncivilized lumberjacks with an affinity for kiddie pools. Although there is always a packed schedule of events, what makes the largest impression on prospective students is the people they interact with on an individual level: professors, fellow prospies, prospie imposters or even their DFMOs (dance floor make-outs) at the annual Tri-Kap Dimensions dance party.
At Dartmouth, or really any and all colleges where socializing often involves drinking, student-athletes are confronted with balancing drinking habits and their athletic performance. How much and how often athletes decide to drink varies depends on a lot of specific team factors while some teams have more lax stances on drinking, others face stricter consequences that make them ardent adherents to their teams' dry season.
This past spring break, my friend and I were greeted by an especially friendly, older saleswoman as we walked into a clothing shop. Upon discovering that we were Dartmouth students, she asked what we were studying.
Dartmouth already has its fair share of contemporary celebrity alums, from the real such as Mindy Kaling '01 and Timothy Geithner '83 to the fictional, such as Meredith Grey and Stephen Colbert. But for the sake of dreaming big in this issue, what if the following famous people went to Dartmouth?
So you haven't showered once during five days of vigorous hiking on your DOC Trip. So you've been drinking from a cup of liquid that a ping pong ball which two minutes ago was sitting in a pool of unidentifiable sludge just landed in. So that alfredo-marinara sauce in the Collis take-out clamshell has been congealing in the sun beside your window so what? It's Dartmouth. From going to school here, and, well, life, you know that these things happen. They're disgusting, yes, but being dirty isn't entirely bad.
If I had to guess the three most commonly broken laws by Dartmouth students, I would guess underage drinking, marijuana use and indecent exposure. While the first two are common at any institution of higher education, I really think that there is something about Dartmouth that makes its students want to take their clothes off.
This past fall, I ventured from the summer glory of my Hanover home away from home to the slightly larger metropolis of London. For the first few weeks I carried a map and asked strangers for directions. I found myself amused by the endearing signage ("Mind the Gap," "Give Way"), the accent, and the enduring reverence for the British Crown. I became accustomed to most facets of life in London, learning coins are actually valuable with the pound, and that to say "I'm just taking a piss" meant that you were joking, not urinating. Socially, however, I was still very much at Dartmouth. Or at the very least, trying to be.
Dartmouth is a relatively small school. Thus, as is wont to happen at liberal arts colleges in the middle of nowhere, you tend to walk around campus with the feeling that you are seeing the same people over and over again. You are not crazy. These people are campus celebs. They are campus celebs because they excel at getting facetime. As we are halfway through our Dartmouth careers, bucket lists are being drawn up faster than Jim Yong Kim can come up with sports to play in the middle of the Green. One item or goal on a Dartmouth student's bucket lists might be becoming a campus celeb. Now as I write from first floor Berry I will list some of the top activities and extracurriculars that help you get facetime, and if you have what it takes, achieve campus celeb status.
Despite the tone of this piece, I truly believe that all of the following are noble career paths, but it's just too easy (genders are mostly arbitrary). Without any further ado, let me introduce you to every Dartmouth student ever.