Over spring break, I turned 22. It was when I was blowing out the candles on my cake that I felt an odd sense of anxiety and nostalgia. At first, I thought this feeling was because every birthday after 21, for lack of a better word, sucks. But according to "Ryan" from Yahoo Answers, I was experiencing a "quarter-life crisis."
A quarter-life crisis, likely triggered by the P.E. department badgering me to take my swim test to graduate, is an accumulation of regrets about wasting and losing one's youth. When I think about it, Dartmouth is partly the cause of this turmoil. A quarter-life crisis is really just a case of "FOMO," the fear of missing out, a problem that's rampant on this campus.
FOMO plays into our campus' fear of doing things alone. Take our obsession with setting up dining dates. We set up eating dates weeks ahead in hopes of not missing out on friendships. Then there's our obsession with incessantly checking blitz or uploading formal pics within 30 minutes of the formal bus pulling back into Hanover. Far too often I've found myself trudging to some party/tails event across campus in hopes of seeing something spectacular happen, only to leave empty-handed with a hangover. FOMO is but one reason for the hyper-social atmosphere here.
But FOMO is far more then some cutesy acronym to describe a campus mentality. It's a very real pressure. I've experienced it countless times. FOMO hit me pretty early. I got into Dartmouth late in fact, after I had already graduated from high school. The entire time I was waiting to get into Dartmouth, I had doubts about the college I was then planning to attend, that I was missing an amazing educational and personal experience at an Ivy League school. I truly feared I had ruined my future and dreams. When I got in, I opted out of a DOC Trip, which made me wonder whether I was missing a Dartmouth rite of passage and thus would not be able to make friends. When I was placed in a sub-free dorm, I worried my social life would plummet.
Looking back at why I felt this sense of loss freshman year, I realize that what I feared missing out on was this early idea of the perfect Dartmouth experience. We do tend to collectively portray our school as an oasis in the woods.
The idea of a perfect experience is first planted in our brains by the Admissions Office. As a tour guide, I talk at lengths about the value of traditions and how "pretty much everyone" engages in activities such as Trips, Homecoming, FSP/LSAs and so forth. It's not hard to feel like you are missing out on something great when it seems like, from before day one, to not engage in every aspect of Dartmouth is a waste of its potential.
It's also interesting to see how this fear of missing out on this perfect Dartmouth experience plays out in our actions. Take, for example, feeling guilty for staying in and missing that giant party you received 10 blitzes about. Or the need to indulge in all four nights of Homecoming/Winter Carnival/Green Key. We fear missing out on memories and stories. Even more so, we fear being the odd man out, being unable to engage in the inevitable "wasn't it crazy last night when..." conversation.
In the same way, FOMO influences our long-term plans on campus. Case in point, an ever so common Dartmouth dilemma: FSP/LSA scheduling. We try to delicately plan out our off-terms so as to not miss out on that perfect class or to make sure we can live in a quad with our best friends. Why does everyone leave in the winter? Because nobody wants to miss out on a Hanover spring. And it cuts the other way, too we've felt pressure to jump into an FSP/LSA to gain that enlightening cultural experience in Madrid/Paris/etc., or at the very least to upload obligatory tourist photos.
When it comes down to it, we talk so much about Dartmouth problems, but we don't always recognize the root cause. I'd venture to say it's FOMO. FOMO is too often minimized as nothing more than a funny Twitter hashtag. But the reality is that FOMO plays into our insecurity that we will leave this school on graduation having not lived up to the ideal Dartmouth experience.
But then again, shouldn't the only expectation that matters be your own? Being in college, I think it's inevitable that our personal expectations become tangled with those of our surroundings. How to untangle this ball of expectations to crawl out of FOMO, if you will is a tough call, but I guess I'll figure it out by the time my midlife crisis rolls around.
