I admit it, I drank the Kool-Aid. I came to believe that all things Dartmouth were the best ever, and that all parts of my past life -- everything from lingo to pals -- were just that, part of the past. As I wearily approach the end of my four years, however, I've reconsidered the merits of Dartmouth friendships. The verdict? Dorothy had it right all along -- there really is no place like home.
First and foremost, let's look at the issue of self-esteem. Remember feeling pretty good at life before you arrived in the 03755 and realized you were surrounded with the most concentrated group of overachieving peers you'd ever encountered? Granted, that elusive "real world" is going to be filled with smarter, better-looking and more accomplished individuals as well, but at least they'll be more diluted. So ditch the Dartmouth friends, and do wonders for your self-confidence.
The D-plan lends itself to a certain type of "flexible" friendship at Dartmouth. From sophomore fall to junior spring, every term brings a new challenge. For the sake of stability in your life, choose friends who don't operate in 10-week blocks, then jet off to Africa, limiting communication to two recipient-repressed blitzes throughout the term. Some of my high school friends have lived with the same housemates in the same apartment for the past three years -- a notion which blows my permanently-unpacking mind. The real world doesn't come in bite-size segments and home friends can certainly teach a few of us a bit about overcoming our friend and work-related ADD.
Looking ahead to future opportunities, those with certain future plans -- such as political aspirations -- may do best to leave the memories of their college years hidden in the forests of New Hampshire. With most of campus not reaching legal drinking age until junior or senior year, there are a lot of dry nights to kill in the wilderness until legality kicks in. For those who are less successful at killing time the legal way, it may be wise to carefully untag those photos and discard of those friends who will be able to link you to the wonderful choices you made freshman year after dropping Cutter or going to Reds.
To your high school friends, you were probably some variation of the AP-enthusiastic, varsity athlete valedictorian -- arguably a better history to support your presidential candidacy than some of the stories your frat brothers will enthusiastically recall after a few beers.
Even for those of you without such lofty goals, having friends from home provides you with an automatically cleaner history, even if simply because of language barriers. If you were playing pong on Monday night with a guy you thought was an '09 because of his sick throw saves, then went home blacked-out only to wake up and discover you slept in a one-room double in Bissell and had to figure out the kid's name by the sign on the door, any attempt at an explanation to your non-Dartmouth friends is automatically less embarrassing. For example, by eliminating all the Dartmouth-isms from that story, you could feasibly recall that you were on a date with a student who led you to believe that he was a senior, but when you got back to his apartment, you realized that he had misrepresented himself. You practically sound like the victim, instead of the idiot, and it's hardly a lie, just a benefit of translation.
In some ways, the uniqueness of the Dartmouth environment is akin to single-sex schooling. There are certainly merits of being surrounded by similar peers -- in terms of intellectual curiosity, as opposed to X or Y chromosomes -- but in both cases, getting re-integrated into the real world poses a distinct challenge. Just like single-sex school alums quickly learn that they must interact with members of both sexes in the real world, Dartmouth graduates find that even our standards of hygiene -- such as urinating and booting in social spaces that have never seen the inclusion of a water cup to clean the pong ball -- just aren't acceptable. For the sake of easing the transition into the real world, it's best to surround yourself with friends who won't perpetuate the problem. That way you won't get fired from your first job by peeing on the wall of your first office Christmas party. The job market is tough enough as it is.
This is not a call to de-pledge, remove yourself from the Dartmouth social scene and ring up a massive phone bill reconnecting with the bulk of your high school graduating class. Enjoy making a fool out of yourself for four years, but don't entirely sever connections with everyone who doesn't understand the meaning of "blitz." You never know when a dose of non-Dartmouth friends might be just what you need.
