Mike Urbach
The last 10 weeks have shown me that the next four years are going to be awesome. Freshman Fall wasn't real life, but at some point during Winter term I started to realize what it meant to go to college. Now that I'm beginning to grasp what Dartmouth is really like, I can safely say that I love it here.
When I arrived in Hanover, I was a huge n00b. I based my perceptions of college social life on the wisdom of Van Wilder and Asher Roth. Dartmouth was to be my playground, and I was going to lead several clubs, stay active outdoors and be an influential member of some political organization. Most of that never happened. Instead, I play a sport, work in the machine shop and on occasion write for The Mirror. And that's awesome.
Ten weeks can make a big difference. After I settled into my own little world at Dartmouth, I realized how much my imagination had run wild before I came to college, and even during my first term here. Now, two terms after the rush of freshman Fall, I realize that college is going to be an unreal amount of fun, just not in the way I had originally imagined.
You can tell me I'm still a n00b and an optimistic freshman, but what am I supposed to do? I'm young enough to remember when I had to do what my parents asked of me. Now, I live with 4,000 pretty amazing people my own age, and I can become a part of pretty much whatever group on campus I want. I like it here.
The fact that I actually love this place (not lust) hit me last week. A girl on my floor was hosting a random prospie, who I found out was deciding between Dartmouth and Cornell (an option I had foolishly considered). I took it upon myself to explain to her why she should come here. An '11 had sent me a similar message this time last year, and I thought it was time for me to pay it forward. I even wrote her a page-long persuasive essay about why coming here was the best decision of my life.
She recently informed me that she has decided to come here. I can only hope that a year from now, she will pay it forward as well.
Eliza Relman
Right now I'm sitting in the first floor Mid Mass study lounge picking at a once-warm, now-cold cinnamon bun and sipping Tazo Wild Sweet Orange tea. One of my study partners is busily tracing the New York waterfront for Architecture 2, and the other is fiddling with a cyclohexane model while flipping through the latest edition of W magazine, the most logical decompression activity after her first orgo midterm.
Six weeks ago I was sitting on a bench with a friend sipping cava, discussing the absurd frequency of the word "vale" in the Spanish language. We were in a park in Barcelona. When we decided to leave a few minutes later, we were left with no option but to scale the 15-foot high gates of the Parque de la Ciutadella who knew public parks in Spain close at midnight?
Two hours ago I was sitting with friends reading aloud from the Haggadah and devouring copious amounts of matzah and charoset in an attempt to create a college version of Seder dinner. Although I'm an atheist, I think religious holidays are the spice of life.
Seventy-three days ago I stepped off a bus in Jemaa el Fna Square in Marrakesh, Morocco. The day was balmy, and the Souks were bustling with merchants and French tourists and young men parading monkeys on leashes.
Last Monday night I was struggling to find a synonym for "prospective." The television in the news room of The Dartmouth was flashing muted CNN images of Lady Gaga, interspersed with some footage of late afternoon at the White House. There were five more stories in line for me to news-edit, and my synonym-seeking ability was fading fast.
A little over a month ago I was annihilating spaceships with my five-year-old host brother, Ignasi, experiencing vicarious joy from his cheers of excitement at our deft destruction.
I will stop the vignettes of my life experiences now. The point I'm trying to make is that you can have a pretty wide variety of experiences in 10 weeks. You can go to a lot of places and see a lot of different things, but you can also stay put and that doesn't necessarily mean you're living a less interesting life. Last Fall term I didn't venture further south than Lou's or further north than McLaughlin for weeks at a time. This Winter I explored three different countries. But I guarantee that if you look hard enough you can find just as much substance and spice in the stacks of Baker-Berry and the woods of the Upper Valley as you can in the streets of Spain 10 weeks is 10 weeks wherever you are, so use them well.
Priya Krishna
I know that everyone says that Dartmouth terms go by so fast because they are "only" 10 weeks long. Well maybe it's just me, but when I think back to what I was doing 10 weeks ago, it actually seems pretty far in the past. In 10 weeks, I have been abroad in France, spent time home in Texas and returned to Dartmouth. The last 10 weeks have proven to be plenty of time to travel, study and just sit on my butt. They have also given me many chances to make many mistakes. I would most definitely exceed my word limit if I discussed every blunder I have made in this not-so-short period of time, so instead I present to you a highlight reel.
10 Mistakes in 10 Weeks:
- Told my host family "Je suis pleine," after one of our first meals together, thinking that meant I was full. Apparently it means I'm pregnant.
- Confused my French art history teacher for a host parent by asking him where his American daughter was.
- Bought my host family chrysanthemums for French National Parents Day. Chrysanthemums are the official funeral flower of France.
- Visited Venice on the one day of the year that it decides to blizzard, and traveled to Rome during what I'm fairly certain was monsoon season.
- Tried to fix an 11S housing crisis using only a low-battery Blackberry on a small boat in the middle of the Adriatic Sea.
- Tried to perform the "Bed Intruder Song" at my LSA+ goodbye dinner in French.
- Took final exams after my French family decided to have impromptu whiskey/sherry/cognac/scotch-tasting session before sending me off to school.
- Tried to relive my Winter spent in France by sampling every type of cheese offered by my local Whole Foods. Thrice.
- Mistakenly pulled out the jhorts for the first time in 11S, only to watch it start snowing. Again. In April.
- Tried Googling "10 weeks" in the middle of my ENGS class to figure out how many days back I had to recall to write this article, only to discover that the top 20 hits are all pregnancy sites. Dear people who sit behind me in class: I'm not with child.
So maybe you learned something from all of that. More likely, you're concerned about my cultural ignorance. Either way, I don't regret any of my past blunders. I've learned from them and have another six weeks to make a few more.
Jack Boger
On a cold March morning earlier this year, I found religion. I was standing on the lip of a glacial lake beneath Cerro Fitz Roy, watching as the first rays of the sun danced on its jagged spires. The sunlight painted the peaks a fiery pink that faded to red, orange, yellow and finally white. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
It sounds cheesy, I know college kid goes traveling, "finds himself," writes sappy reflection about it. Trite as it may be, for me it's still true.
I didn't set off on the trip with any grand intentions. My winter plans developed mostly on a whim. I watched "The Motorcycle Diaries" and started dreaming about South America. Things didn't quite work out as romantically as in the movie rain and fog shrouded Machu Picchu when I visited, I never rode a motorcycle and I'm still not as good-looking as Gael Garca Bernal but it was still the trip of a lifetime. I took an off term in the truest sense of the word, traveling all over the southern cone of the continent. I started in Peru and then flew to Buenos Aires, where I spent a month taking Spanish classes. I took a ferry across the Rio de la Plata to Uruguay and back before traveling south to wine country in Mendoza. From there I crossed the Andes into Chile, where I spent an amazing week on the coast and in the capital. Then I bused down to Bariloche and began a whirlwind tour of Patagonia that would take me all the way to Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world.
While the sights I saw will stay with me for a long time mushroom clouds gathering like UFOs in the mountains above El Chalten, the stark twilight in the Beagle Channel, the technicolor lake country around Bariloche it was the people I met along the way that defined my trip. Most of my time in South America was spent with Dartmouth kids I had only known back on campus as acquaintances, if at all. If nothing else, my trip convinced me of the strength of the bonds that bind Dartmouth people together, no matter where we roam. Beyond my collegiate companions, the others I met, both locals and fellow travelers, truly touched my heart. Whether I was sharing in an impromptu Shabbat ceremony with Israelis in the shadow of Fitz Roy, crashing on a stranger's couch in Via del Mar, trekking with Australians in the Andes or basking in the glory of Torres del Paine at midnight with new Chilean friends, I was struck by the warmth and kindness of the world's people.
Yet in spite of all the wonderful experiences I had with others over the last 10 weeks, it was the relationship that I developed with myself this Winter that proved the most meaningful. In Uruguay and Chile, I found myself traveling alone for weeks at a time. I was initially nervous about the prospect, but grew to relish the opportunity to reinvent and reintroduce myself every day. I learned that what Bob Marley said is true your home really is in your head. Even surrounded by people, you're still flying solo.
The next time I feel consumed by social anxieties or the daily grind of life, I hope I will remember my own advice, and that you will as well. Spread your wings and fly. You might be surprised at the places the breezes of self-confidence will take you.
