The Dartmouth Breakfast Club.
There are few things more pivotal in our adolescent development than finding an anthem we can really rally behind. Whether it be the image of John Cusack with a boombox outside your window, or Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" blasting on your car radio, we need something we can get lost in. Something that suspends reality for us and gives us a taste of how everything could be if life were, in fact, like a movie where the guy gets the girl in the end and the credits roll as they kiss in the background.
For me, that was "The Breakfast Club." It gave me hope that a bunch of delinquents from different cliques of high school life could come together in the span of one Saturday detention and form a sort of bond that could potentially outlive that day. Just maybe, people who were radically different from each other could still share a moment. And maybe even overcome their differences for good. I know. I was pretty dopey.
Because in the real world Emilio Estevez would have slammed Anthony Michael Hall against a locker the next time he saw him. And Judd Nelson would have broken up with Molly Ringwald as soon as they'd done the nasty. As for Ally Sheedy? Who knows. She was just weird to begin with.
And no, I never did have that Breakfast Club moment in high school. I probably wouldn't even be at Dartmouth if I had acted on my fantasy of finding a bad boy Judd Nelson-type. But that's beside the point. In a lot of ways, I have found that "Breakfast Clubesque" moment again and again while at Dartmouth.
Granted, my moments haven't always been quite as melodramatic as those in "The Breakfast Club," when they sit in a circle and tell the stories of how they got into detention. (Seriously, Emilio, you duct taped a boy's ass-cheeks?) Or even as euphoric as when they all get high together and have an impromptu dance party, where once again Emilio steals the scene by shattering glass with his scream. But still, I've had my fair share of moments.
We have jocks. And nerds. And princesses. And even a few basket cases. Yet somehow we still manage to come together from time to time. We bond over a class we took together, or fell asleep together in. We laugh about that one really crazy drunken night we had together. And we still talk to our trippees, no matter how long it's been. Well, at least in theory. If you're one of those people who don't acknowledge your trippees suck it up. At least wave in passing. Nobody likes an ass.
We're often told that Dartmouth traditions are what set us apart and bring us together. Bonfire. Homecoming. Carni Classic. Winter Carnival. Drinking. Green Key. We have a lot in common. Yet, in many ways, each of us exists in our own little Dartmouth bubble.
You play a sport. You don't play a sport. You're an econ major. You're pre-med. You sing in an a capella group. You can't stand a capella. Or, you're like me, and you don't have any readily discernible talents.
For the most part, though, we stay put in our own circles of influence. It's not only that we rarely venture outside of the Dartmouth bubble it's just that we rarely even venture outside of our own Dartmouth bubbles. Jocks hang with jocks. Nerds with nerds. Princesses with princesses. And basket cases, well, I don't really know what basket cases do. They're probably the kleptos racking up black North Faces.
Stereotypes exist at Dartmouth, just as they did in high school. Just as they will in the real world. Don't kid yourself. People judge read the back page of The Mirror if you don't believe me. The point of this rambling, however, is that moments like a Saturday detention that brought together a jock, a nerd, a princess and a basket case also exist. These moments exist even at Dartmouth, where every guy's a bro and every upperclassmen woman is a jaded senior. We're all caricatures to some extent. It just depends on how you draw us.
