The Mirror Grills Some Grad Students: Enough About Me, Tell Me About Yourself. What Do You Think Of Me?

When have you interacted with a graduate student on campus? Maybe you passed Chem 5 solely because of your sympathetic TA, a chemistry graduate student. Not you? Then maybe you spend enough time at Dana Biomedical Library to accurately distinguish the REALLY stressed med students from the pre-med wannabes. No? Then you've at least seen a decidedly mature student pumping iron at the gym or a hoard of (preppy, well-groomed, attractive) Tuckies drinking non-Keystone beer at the Canoe Club. Yes, you have indeed seen the elusive breed of Dartmouth scholar known as the "graduate student," but an interaction it was not.The short answer: Undergraduates and graduate students don't interact frequently."I can't say there's been much interaction with undergrads," John Clifford Tu'10 said. Those graduate students who do come across undergraduates regularly characterized their encounters as uncommon or unique. Andrew Giustini, for example, a student of both the Thayer School of Engineering and the Dartmouth Medical School, is a graduate advisor, who holds open office hours for undergraduate residents of his cluster."I wasn't a GA for my first year at DMS though," Giustini said. "As a regular med student I almost never interacted with undergraduates."Judith Rauscher, a graduate student within Dartmouth's Comparative Literature Masters Program, interacts heavily with undergraduates as a member of the Dartmouth Decibelles, an undergraduate a cappella group. Although Rauscher completed her undergraduate education in Germany, she came to Dartmouth as an exchange student last year. "Because I was here last year as an undergrad, I am in the Decibelles and am apparently the only grad student in an a cappella group," Rauscher said. "Usually grad students aren't allowed to join, but [I was allowed to join] because I was a member last year."For the most part, however, graduate students feel separated from undergraduate life on campus. "I think most med students would say that we're part of a different community than undergraduates," said Kelly Michaelsen '06, a student at Dartmouth Medical School pursuing both an MD and Ph.D. "I think that there are a lot of things that we share with undergrads, like going to shows at the Hop, but we're not going to lunch at Collis."As any undergraduate who has attended a fraternity or sorority party (i.e. any undergraduate) knows, such separation spills into the campus social scene as well. Read: gawking graduate students are few and far between."The perception of grad students is that Webster Avenue, with all its Greek houses, is the undergrad experience,'" Brian Zalasky, a student of the two-year Masters of Art in Liberal Studies program, said. Clifford agreed, noting the significant age difference between undergraduates and many graduate students. "I think graduate students feel a little strange going to a frat party with people 10 years younger than them," Clifford said. "If I were an undergrad, I'm not sure if I'd want to see grad students there either." If not the exalted abodes of the Grecian elite, which haunts do these elusive 20 and 30-somethings inhabit? "We stick to bars," Clifford said.Clifford attributed the "divide" between graduate students and undergraduates to the predominance of Greek parties in place of an undergraduate "bar scene."
Hint: Bars check for IDs valid, state-issued IDs. "There are a lot of grad students who have not even been on frat row, who would never go into a frat basement," Rauscher said. "Because we are old enough to drink legally, we sort of stay amongst ourselves, unless there is Disco at Tabard or a special party of some sort."And why would a grad student pass up an opportunity to crush a plastic cup after pounding back its unidentifiable, vodka-based, pink contents (Macho!)? Or to shamelessly grind with a sweaty sometimes sandy coed who is 10 years one's junior? Is there ANYTHING unappealing about that illegal fantasy scenario? "Most grad students, unless they went to Dartmouth [as undergraduates], don't go to frat parties," Giustini stated. "Even for those who went here, the longer they have been [in their graduate programs], the less they attend undergraduate parties."People outgrow their pong addictions? Oh, the horror! A life without Greek life, without Tea or Tackies or DJ Enzo?! It sounds like death pre-big-ol'-basement-in-the-sky, that is. Still, undergraduate life does have its perks, even for those graduates unwilling to saunter into a smelly (read: toxic) basement themselves."I went to a large public [university], so coming to Dartmouth, it was really interesting to me how old Dartmouth is," Jeanine Amacher, a Ph.D. candidate in biochemistry within the Molecular and Cellular Biology Graduate Program, said. "I think that the traditions that undergrads have are really cool."Amacher, who completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Oregon, took the polar bear plunge over Winter Carnival weekend."It is also funny to walk to lab on a Monday or Wednesday morning and pass SAE, with its trash-bags full of Keystone Light," Amacher said.Lest the old traditions fail.