Some time ago, a female friend of mine told me she was amazed that I was both in a fraternity and a "good person." I wasn't sure how to respond. On the one hand, I understood her point.
A drunk alum tells me to enjoy this while I can. The real world, he says, is a lot less fun. I get this piece of advice, in one form or another, every year during Green Key.
When I came to Dartmouth, some of my closest friends were women. But by the end of my freshman year, I barely spoke to women at all outside of passing hellos or frenzied, convoluted exchanges in the basement.
My parents are polar opposites in many ways. Their friends from college often express amazement that my dad, a football and baseball-playing SAE, ended up with my mom, who was a hippie flower child with hair down to her waist.
As the end of my student life at Dartmouth nears, I'm finding myself looking for the people, events, significant characters and lessons that have defined the story of my class' four years here. One of the first things I did at Dartmouth was to meet then-College President Jim Wright.
Through the low branches of the trees that line the road at the entrance to my high school lacrosse field, I see Aaron waiting for me on a patch of thick grass.
When my close friend and lacrosse teammate decided to try out for a play this past fall, I responded with earnest, if cautious, encouragement.
We come to Dartmouth in a million different ways by car, by bus, by plane. Some come to Dartmouth because they hear it's a good school, only setting foot on campus for the first time at Orientation.
, At the end of Winter term at Dartmouth, the campus empties out. Relieved to be done with exams and the cold, students head exuberantly to the tropics, gleefully to the mountains or quietly to the familiarity of home.
"Coulda, woulda, shoulda." That's what my dad always says when I start a sentence with "I should have..." It's infuriating.