H i, my name is Katherine Gorman, and I am borderline Obsessive-Compulsive (self-diagnosed). Anal retentive and a perfectionist to the max. Anyone that knows anything about me knows this to be true. A quick run-down of some common OCD symptoms checklist will affirm my argument.
Repeated clearing of the throat? I go through weeks where I am convinced that I can't get a full breath no matter how hard I try (and I gave up smoking almost a year ago). When I do this, my mom thinks I am having an anxiety attack that will somehow lead to anorexia.
Specific counting systems? You bet. Groups of four, everything is in groups of four. I won't get you started on the formulas that used to keep me up at night when I first learned prime factorization as a child. Sexual obsession? Let's not go there. Fear of contamination? Clearly not, as all those who saw me in the AD basement last week can attest.
An obsession with numbers loving evens and loathing odds? Yes, and I'm not alone -- just ask Nicole Newman '08. Nicole explained to me that she has a bit of an obsession with numbers: "Everything always has to be on an even number; for example, the TV volume, or when I set my alarm I have to set it for 9:32 AM." Those that live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, so I say, let Nicole set her alarm clock to 4:44 and 44 seconds if she so chooses.
According to Wikipedia.com, "in some cases, a pattern of uniformity on a bank account may indicate obsessive-compulsive spending." Oh my god, I definitely have this one! There is an undeniable pattern as far as my finances are concerned; my accounts are always negative. Doctor!
The funny thing is that Dartmouth is just full of kids like me, kids with borderline compulsive personality disorders who possess the ability to joke about their weird, quirky habits but wouldn't give them up, not even for a million dollars. Because they probably couldn't. I have been keeping a color-coded, weekly "time management" calendar -- you can pick up your own personal copy from the Academic Skills Center, third floor Collis -- since my freshman fall. Every Sunday night I color in the week to come: blue for working out, green for class, orange for meals, purple for studying, yellow for showering and dressing, pink for other. All of these years (3 to be exact) I thought I was so damn special, so unique. But when I set out to do some research for this article, I found out that practically everyone at Dartmouth has a color-coded day planner (most have an iCal, which makes me simply outdated). But the perfectionist-to-the-point-of-obsessive traits of Dartmouth students do not end there.
Some obsessive tendencies are of a more artistic and bizarre nature. Ty Moddelmog '08 is haunted by the particular architectural eras of sand castles. He says, "Whenever I make sand castles they have to be in the Tudor style or else I just absolutely freak out. In fact, I spend my summers combing beaches, looking for some Moorish or Gothic b.s. to knock down. Does that make me neurotic?"
A female '10, who wishes to remain anonymous, confessed that she had seen some pretty weird behavior from her classmates. "I knew this girl in my Writing 5 class who would walk across certain paths on the Green depending on the day of the week," she said. "And I don't remember her name." Maybe this girl is unmemorable because it takes her too long to walk across campus, leaving her no time to socialize? One can only imagine.
Obsessions can be so deeply ingrained, so inevitable, that they interfere with our romantic relationships. I for one have definitely had a near-breakup fight with my boyfriend because I separate my laundry like a madwoman (darks, lights, reds, whites, towels and hand wash) and refused to wash his black underwear with my light green tee shirt. When tears were falling and threats were being made it became clear to me that unless I changed my anal (and wasteful) ways, I stood to lose my relationship. Though my thoughts immediately turned to a disorganized mix of bleeding reds, whites, light greens and dark blues, I decided that it was a risk I was just going to have to take.
I am not the only one who have let my obsessions get in the way of my love life. Just take it from Sarah Van Dyke '09, who reported that, "My friend Bridget Alex '08 always has to put her earplugs in after hooking up. She literally pulls them out of her purse and says to her man of the night, 'I have to wear earplugs to sleep, I'm sorry'. I find it hilarious."
Others, like Rebecca Rombom '08, a former executive editor of The Dartmouth known to keep her chair covered with a blanket because she didn't know who had sat on it before her, would empathize with Alex. She says "when the guy I was dating was sleeping over with regularity, I would never let him sleep in later than me -- which sometimes meant forcing him to wake up at 8 AM -- because I knew that if he left after me he wouldn't make the bed. And coming home to an unmade bed really freaks me out."
Similarly, an '08 female said, "I have asked a hookup to make the bed before leaving, but mostly because the hookup wasn't good at all, and I wanted to punish him. And you had better not attach my name to that quote or I will put wasabi in your eyelids." Don't worry, Anonymous, your secret's safe with me.
An '08 male, who also wished to remain anonymous in order not to harm his chances of getting ass in the future, admitted, "I once brought a girl home and made her wait while I paused to brush my teeth. ." He also admitted to organizing his shirts from cool to warm colors, and believe it or not, this is coming from a straight man.
If you look for it, you can find perfectionist quirks and obsessive traits in almost every person at Dartmouth. After all, the twitches that make us hate odd numbers or Moorish sand castles are also the very things that made us brilliant, or at least hard-working enough to get into Dartmouth. So what's a student to do with his or her compulsions? As long it doesn't adversely affect your life (like Writing 5, who might still take 20 minutes to cross the Green) embrace it! Hell, even share your quirky trait with some friends, because odds are they probably do the same sort of thing. That being said, I have to go -- I'm 14 minutes and 44 seconds behind schedule and there are open doors all over my apartment.
Katherine is a staff writer for The Mirror. If she hadn't put down the stuff about her crazy colored planner, we would have.
