Winter Survival Guide
Luke's recommendations for getting through winter term.
Luke's recommendations for getting through winter term.
In our previous column, we were so overjoyed about finally making it back to campus after our nationwide flightmare that we forgot to mention how we got here.
In case you were wondering, the coldest recorded temperature on Earth was minus 135.8 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 93.2 degrees Celsius for the metric folk among us. No, this was not in Hanover, though that may be hard to believe given our current state of affairs. It was on the East Antarctic Plateau on Aug. 10, 2010, which is the middle of winter down there in the Southern Hemisphere.
As we attempt to adjust to the frozen tundra that is 14W, we’ve noticed a lot of changes at the College on the Hill. Daylight hours have dwindled, King Arthur Flour has reintroduced the brie-and-apple staple to our daily diets and overeager ’18s are wandering their soon-to-be alma mater. And of course, there’s us — your new Mirror editors. We know we have big shoes to fill, especially when it comes to giving you your weekly dose of Overheards and double entendres. Before we dive into the lives of others, we wanted to take a minute to introduce ourselves. After extensive research on OkCupid (online dating is legit, we promise), we’ve come up with profiles to give you a little insight into our deeply private personal lives.
Walking into my two-room triple this term to two barren, stripped beds stunned me. My home was missing my two best friends — there was no one there blasting music; the room wasn’t already a mess. I was forced to get ready to conquer my sophomore winter solo. I now have the most luxurious and spacious single on campus, but trying to fill up all the space by myself is going to be, well, a little lonely. The people whose clothes I would borrow, who hated waking up to my obnoxious sonic boom alarm and who enjoyed late night EBAs with me have left Hanover for Barcelona and Paris.
In the darkest moments of my finals period last term, I looked for anything entertaining to distract me from the 10 pages I had to write in 12 hours. Bored of Facebook stalking and walking back and forth between KAF and Novack, I decided to create a Friendsy account. After attempting to navigate the maze of recognizable faces, I found myself looking at the top murmurs, a collection of the most popular anonymous shout-outs to Dartmouth students.
With Dartmouth regular decision applications due today, Common Application essays are still very much on the minds of future freshmen. For graduating seniors however, applications are nothing but a relic of the past. We asked four seniors to review their Dartmouth application essays, and the results were striking, poignant and sometimes hilarious. For many, re-reading applications was a reminder of both how much they had changed and the opportunities Dartmouth had allowed them to pursue through the years.
Within our increasingly medicalized society, information processing disorders and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder can easily be conflated with Adderall and similar “miracle drugs,” peddled nonchalantly across campus by students who don’t always understand the deep issues behind the disabilities. Due to a culture where legitimate treatment for learning disabilities can be marred by stereotypes of partying or cheating the system to get ahead, students utilizing a variety of accessibility services on Dartmouth’s campus are often misunderstood.
COLD DISTRIBS:Everyone seems to be scrambling to find labs — try ice-coring? PANHELL: Is rush happening?
'15 Girl: I think I did poorly on the SATs because I started making patterns with my answers. '15 Girl on the hook up culture: It's just so weird that two strangers just get naked and touch each other. '16 Girl: I think I just broke up with him over Snapchat. '17 Girl: Bridgewater don't come close to the emotional abuse we put each other under. '17 Guy by grill: What's line for a burger? '14 Guy: I have no idea what a provost is. Blitz overheards to mirror@thedartmouth.com.
Winterim was once only three weeks long, and those three weeks were completely torturous after freshman fall. Jan. 3, 2011, the day of our 11W reunion, seemed better than Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year all wrapped into one. We were hyper-aware of all the deficiencies of our home existence — no friends, no four-day-a-week sleepovers, no weird semi-intellectual conversations with strangers. We withered away without them, waiting for 11W like it was the only thing keeping us alive. Seanie often watched Dartmouth webcam’s live feed of the Green with a guarded secrecy that made her feel like she was doing something illegal rather than just pathetic. Amanda alternated between hibernating and eating ice cream.
In case you were wondering, we have now marked approximately 2,014 rotations of the earth around the sun since the birth of some guy in Bethlehem. I say “approximately” because evidence suggests that Jesus was born between 7 and 2 B.C., so the count’s a little off. We could just call it “Common Era,” satisfying all non-Christians, though I know Dionysius Exiguus, the monk who coined “anno Domini” in 525 A.D., would be just a tad disappointed.
HOME MEMOIRS:Literally what is "Three For Ship?" Why is its website so confusing? DICK'S HOUSE:While there is, by definition, nothing trendy about Dick's House, the difficulty one has getting an appointment seems to imply it's the hottest spot on campus. COURSE REJECTION:Somehow not getting into the classes you wanted stings almost as much as getting rejected for formal.
As the fall winds down, we find ourselves growing more and more nostalgic of our time here. They say you get wiser with age, but as the sun sets on our Dartmouth careers, we feel we are becoming less knowledgeable and less relevant. We did some research and uncovered dirt on aspects of Dartmouth that ’17s will never know, as well as things only they (so far) have experienced.
The Dartmouth '16 Guy: I'm not really into the party scene, but those frisbee girls really know how to throw down. '17 Girl: All of you New Yorkers have sticks up your asses.
The 1902 Room seemed like the perfect place for me to kill some time. I didn’t want the stuffiness of Sanborn, the facetime of First Floor Berry or the loneliness of the stacks, and the 1902 Room was just there. Beckoning me. I plop myself down in one of the 77 chairs and pretended to do work for quite some time.
Hello. Merry finals season. Happy Thanksgiving. Merry Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanzaa. Happy New Year. Good winterim. The next time you hear from us, all of this will be over, grades will be in, turkeys eaten in celebration of things that should not be celebrated, presents unwrapped, resolutions made and resolutions shattered.
A few weeks ago, as I walked home from Collis, I witnessed a couple in the middle of the Green. Fully going at it. At 9 p.m. Not a single passerby intervened, giggled or ogled. Actually, no one so much as flinched. This, Dartmouth, is our cry for help.
In case you were wondering, ping pong, or table tennis, is probably older than you think it is — some form of it has existed since the mid-1800s. Modern paddles and balls have been around since the 1950s, and by all accounts, some variation of pong has been played at Dartmouth since then. I could have made my last column of the term be something deep and insightful, but instead I have chosen to write a treatise on pong.