One hallmark of the Dartmouth term is that it’s doled out in portion-controlled weeks, one after the next. Week one is for adjustment; week two is for “catching up” with once-per-term friends; week three begins the long and terrible blur of midterms that never end; week six is the termly weekend extravaganza; week eight is for formals; week nine is for wishing you were somewhere else.
Wednesday, Oct. 17 at 6 p.m. It’s rainy, it’s cold. I’m sitting in the basement of the Hanover Public Library — a personal first — with three women and men, all of whom are comfortably three times my age.
This summer, a soon-to-be Dartmouth freshman texted me asking whether she should buy any articles of clothing in particular in preparation for her transition from our hometown of Lexington, Kentucky to the cold north.
From the outside, academic departments may seem like established, unshakable institutions. It is easy to take them for granted, to view them as givens.
Your freshman year at Dartmouth has a special kind of glow. There will be moments in which it feels like the best time of your life — when you make friends with people from all across the country, when you experience the magic of four distinct seasons, when you uncover opportunities for learning whose existence you never fathomed.
President Donald Trump’s call for citizens to “buy American and hire American” has had the unintended effect of bringing to light the ongoing, silent struggles of legal immigrants seeking employment and eventual citizenship.
The most conventional definition of “persistence” invokes some sort of struggle or challenge.
