I'm going to say this at the outset and hope that you'll keep the bar appropriately low: I have spent the last few weeks totally terrified of writing this column.
Before I go any further, let me say this for those of you who don't know me it's not that I scare particularly easily.
If there is one thing I've learned to do at Dartmouth, it's been to speak my mind. I came to this place the kind of student who went through school quietly, and I'll leave it one who does almost everything at full volume. I can go on tirades about almost anything at this point. My own mother has said she doesn't recognize me.
Still, I'll readily admit, I'm struggling.
It's certainly not that my time at the College hasn't been transformative and life-changing and enlightening it's been all of those things, repeatedly. It's also been occasionally disappointing and frustrating and, for lack of a better word, just plain hard.
And it's not like I couldn't use this space to extol this place's virtues, to refute the critics who I think are sorely mistaken. I could tell you about the small classes, great professors, irreplaceable friends and unforgettable times I've had; about how I'm leaving majoring in something that I didn't know I'd love until I got here; about how I became involved in and enamored of a Greek system that almost deterred me from applying; about how this place taught me to think and study and relax, all in equal measure.
I could also tell you about the frustrations I've had in the last four years from gender politics (and the strikingly polarized dialogue that characterizes any discussion of them); to an occasionally apathetic and tirelessly segregated student body; to a largely self-serving alumni debate; to an administration that's sometimes seemed incredibly out of touch; to the few professors who were more concerned with the sound of their own voice than with ensuring anyone understood what they were talking about.
After four years here, and countless hours spent reporting about Dartmouth on the pages of this newspaper, it's certainly not as if I have nothing to say.
So why is it that this is at least the third late night (read: early morning) that's found me facing writer's block of a kind I never have before?
Part of it, to be sure, is probably cowardice. Put me in a room of my peers and I will say exactly what I think about almost anything on this campus at a decibel level that is arguably unnecessary. But it is, to be fair, a little bit of a different thing to shoot your thoughts out into the forever-world that is the Internet.
Still and maybe I'm giving myself too much credit here (it wouldn't be the first time) I don't really think that's the main reason I've become full of word vomit and little else. I think the inescapable inarticulateness I'm facing has more, actually, to do with my own uneasiness at saying something too early, rather than with a fear of saying something wrong.
In truth, I'm just not sure that my time at Dartmouth is something I can tie up neatly in 800 words. I'm now just days away from the end of my time here, and I'm still not really sure what the hell just happened it's like college is this big mess of moments all mashed together, and, as much as I squint, I'm just not sure I can make out what it all amounts to. Maybe someday, when I'm a few steps removed, I'll be able to decipher the mosaic that was the last few years but as for right now, I'm pretty happy to just remember the moments good and bad, big and small, meaningless and profound.
To be honest, though, even if by some stroke of luck I'd somehow figured it all out by the time the editors now in charge of this paper began demanding that I stop flagrantly disrespecting deadlines I'd once enforced (my bad Susan) I sort of doubt I'd have a whole lot to say that had mass appeal.
My proverbial "Dartmouth experience" (cue clich here) has been exactly that: mine. Generalizing it to provide some sort of lesson to future students would be both to cheapen my own experience, and to fail to recognize all of yours.
So here I am. About to graduate, with the opportunity to write something truly profound and leave it behind as a sort of final stamp on my college career and I've pretty much got nothing.
But here's the catch: I think that, more than anything else, might be indication that I'm ready to leave this place as much as I'll cry about it today, and probably in the weeks upcoming.
In truth, I think Dartmouth might have taught me when to keep my mouth shut just as much as it's taught me when to open it.
Allie Lowe '10 is the former Editor-in-Chief.
