You are not special. You do not leave a big hole. They dig a hole and put you in it. Those words, spoken impossibly elegantly by Garrison Keillor ushered me into my senior year at Dartmouth.
I never felt more in touch with my half-Italian heritage than when I heard the old country saying "dolce far niente" or "it's sweet to do nothing." Doing nothing is a little taboo at Dartmouth but I'm taking the first step and admitting that there's nothing I'd rather do. I could live without homework.
Doing the actual Dartmouth Seven is hard. In addition to having to find a willing partner, it requires some serious planning (when do the lights in front of Dartmouth Hall turn off?
As both a creative writing major with a thesis to finish in mere weeks and a writer for the illustrious Dartmouth Mirror, I have some experience trying to come up with creative ideas.
Our hearts are extremely fragile things. In our lexicon of clichs, they race, pound, leap and feel like their jumping out of our chests.
Dartmouth students like to think they invented the wheel. Or maybe just pong. Regardless, we're a bunch that thinks highly of ourselves.
There are a handful of complaints that will crop up in any rant about Dartmouth: Collis is always overcrowded, we're in the middle of nowhere, we have too much work. But above all others, one gripe has stood the test of time: It's miserably cold in Hanover. The polar ice caps may be melting at record rates, and the rest of the world might be reaching new high temperatures every year, but Hanover remains immune from global warming.
Although women only began graduating from the College slightly more than 25 years ago, some Daughters of Dartmouth have already reached prominence in a multitude of fields including entertainment, government and business (no pressure, '10s who have recently littered the corporate world with your resume droppings). After four years in this cutthroat, frozen wasteland, Dartmouth's alumnae seem to have had no trouble conquering the real world. In addition to the stress of normal Dartmouth life, some of the College's earliest female graduates faced even greater obstacles.
Upon starting your first year at Dartmouth, you probably received a copy of the Green Book, which contains a picture of each member of your class paired with some personal information limited to hometown and high school.
When I consider the children I might decide to spawn when I'm older, I can picture them doing all kinds of things: winning Nobel prizes, becoming leaders of the free world, and buying me tacky "#1 Mom" mugs for Mother's Day (which is this weekend, for all you slackers) to name a few.