Amidst the greasy watermelons, chariot races and pie-throwing contest that herald the approaching Fieldstock weekend looms the scary realization that we've almost reached the end of the sophomore summer Slip 'n Slide (or the bottom of the sophomore summer Double Drop Falls, depending on which water toy metaphor you prefer). Trips down to the river are replaced by late-night study sessions; as finals approach, a stint at the library is no longer a Wednesday-evening taboo. As the summer evening sounds of Lone Pine Tavern drift upstairs, marking fall's return of Collis pasta, rising juniors are forced to confront the fact that college is halfway done.
In rebelling against Alice Cooper's famous 1972 lyrics to "School's Out," our 10-week summer school session initially appears to be a counterintuitive transition towards the latter half of our college careers and the real world that sits at the horizon. Other college students are out working with grown-ups while we spend the summer months entirely with fellow 20-year-olds. If you're in ASTR 3, ENGS 3 and CLSC 4, you probably haven't recognized so many of your classmates since elementary school, when everyone proceeded from Social Studies to Language Arts in single-file lines. But if sophomore summer violates the notion that "school's out for summer," it helps prepare us for the time when "school's out forever."
The majority of the class not living in dorm rooms brought about major changes in day-to-day living. I myself lived in an off-campus house. The introduction of a living room meant "entertaining" didn't happen only in beds; many expanded their social circles, finally able to talk to new people outside the setting of a fraternity basement. The addition of a kitchen facilitated a shift away from DBA and Topside dollars, as this summer many shopped at Shaws and the Co-op. Once we move into the real world, real wages are no longer just a concept for discussion in a social science class; instead they determine whether or not our Dartmouth educations have afforded us the ability to stock our shelves and refrigerators with more than Ramen Noodles and Keystone.
Perhaps nothing screams the real world more than jobs. For some students, myself included, having experienced a day at The Office means little more than having put up with Michael Scott's painful ignorance as the boss on the NBC sitcom. But as the corporate internship is a common choice for those with approaching off-terms, many will trade in their MWF, 10, 11, 12 schedules for double-digit hour days in the workplace.
Long before anyone sets foot in an office for their first day, however, recruiting gave those who participated (myself included) a taste of the corporate world. Students interested in finance, law and advertising traded in stalking on Facebook.com -- some even took down their risqu profile pictures -- for daily monitoring of MonsterTrak.com. Instead of sending blitzes to our crushes, we wrote personalized cover letters to the corporations with whom we sought employment. Some firms reacted in turn; Bridgewater Associates, one of the country's leading hedge funds, distributed playing cards and pong balls stamped with the company logo. After all, it's called "recruiting;" they want us. All too often -- with college applications, job searches and the like -- we forget that there are needs and wants on both sides of the equation.
As much as candidates tried to impress their future employers (and vice-versa), the application process forced us to reflect on ourselves. Putting together a resume really compels you to think about what you've done and where you're going. Those who think of the process as entirely negative forget the fact that in taking any next step, an individual consciously or unconsciously asks his- or herself a very important question: Why?
This process is by no means exclusive to corporate recruiting. Travelling abroad, shadowing a doctor or doing community service -- other popular choices for an off-term -- require the same self-analysis. If sophomore summer creates an environment where we don't approach our classes with the usual focus, we should take advantage of the fact that our off-term experiences do not face as distractions the heat waves of June, July and August. The value of an off-term experience comes as much from learning about ourselves as what we actually do.
Over parents weekend, I attended a lecture by famed language professor John Rassias, whom I had never heard before. The energetic Greek educator spoke passionately about the value of cutting through the different crusts that society imposes on our personalities: from our families, our peers and our careers. Clearly, the third crust has yet to form around us.
If I took a while in getting to the point of this column -- frequently stalling with pop-culture references -- it's because I needed to cut through crusts and think about new ones before they harden. Sophomore summer is the midpoint of our college careers, but also somewhat of a boundary point when our futures begin to have an impact on who we are. What becomes important is that we focus on how we are affected as much as what affects us.
As Rassias wrote 40 years ago, "Nothing is real unless it touches something in me and I am aware of it."
