Since my first-year seminar during my freshman fall, I have often been shocked by the speech and oratory skills of Dartmouth students as a whole. From sufferers of “like” syndrome to arrogant abusers of overly complex vocabulary and syntax, too many of us fail to express ourselves concisely or precisely through speech. More »
Last weekend, my father visited me on one of his meandering journeys up to Dartmouth. These became an instant tradition a few years ago, when he realized that he could use the somewhat legitimate-sounding excuse of “visiting his son at college” to take a few days off, drink some wine and enjoy some good, old-fashioned quiet. In his day, noises were neither so loud nor so obnoxious as they are today. Indeed, loud noises tend to startle him unpleasantly, and I truly believe that he takes every honking car in Boston as a personal affront. But he enjoys the trips, as far as I can tell, not only for the superb lack of honking, but also because they give him the opportunity to hear the rantings and ravings of arrogant youth (the best and only kind) from a slightly bemused perspective, before genially dismissing them as ranting and raving, and relishing the following day’s quiet all the more for the experience. More »
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