Overall, Dartmouth's pretty messed up. I've spent the past few years trying to highlight some of these problems in my articles and have spoken publicly about the devastating effects of sexual assault, homophobia and mental illness on our campus. After reflecting on my writing career, I realized I haven't written a singe article that's not either jaded, cynical or just plain depressing. I've voiced the issues but never acknowledged those that helped me overcome my own obstacles. So this is my last article, and I want to say that, just for the record, there are some wonderful things about Dartmouth. There are some gems out there, and I want to thank them.
These gems are my professors. We often say that learning happens as much outside the classroom as inside it, but we forget to mention that sometimes learning does happen inside the classroom. Don't get me wrong, I have taken countless mind-numbing psychology classes with 200 students and not every class or every professor is perfect. But I've been lucky to find professors and mentors who have supported me, challenged me and made me question my assumptions, critique my privilege and push me to new levels of understanding.
I love learning, and I am proud to say that I cannot count the times that I left "Kierkegaard and Existentialism" with religion professor Ronald Green, "Telling Stories for Social Change" with women's and gender studies professor Pati Hernandez and my psychology seminars with professors Peter Tse and Siobhan Robinson feeling invigorated and rejuvenated. These courses reminded me why I came here, reminded me why I want to spend my life in a context where I can keep learning (I hesitate to use the word academia') and reassured me that no matter how dark life may seem, there is a book, an idea or a conversation that can be illuminated. If this makes me sound like a privileged, bourgeois intellectual tool, so be it. I prefer to think that I just sound like a nerd. We all are at heart.
Former College President Jim Yong Kim often spoke to the student body about our potential, telling us to make the problems of the world our own, to be the leaders of tomorrow. I'll refrain from commenting on the undercurrents of a pervasive white savior complex in many of Kim's speeches. These issues aside, I always felt uncomfortable with Kim's treatment of Dartmouth students as those who must change the world. Whenever I feel guilty about not "taking advantage of Dartmouth's opportunities" through corporate recruiting or aggressive networking (undoubtedly the fastest route to becoming a "leader of tomorrow"), I refer back to a quotation written by my thesis advisor in an op-ed last year, in which Green noted that perhaps changing the world should not be our goal, or at least not at first.
"Some students will go on to become significant leaders who will change the world for the better, and that is certainly good. But some will just be better people more thoughtful, more critical of careless assumptions, more compassionate, more complete in themselves, better citizens, better friends and better parents and that must be our first goal," Green wrote.
So, this article is a thank you note. Thank you, Ron, for reminding me and every student who has had the good fortune to take a course with you to not lose sight of our center. Thank you Siobhan, for noticing that I was having a rough time last fall, for asking how you could help and for sending me job opportunities and checking in months after class ended. Thank you Pati, for teaching me to stop talking and start listening, to think before raising a point or posing an argument, to respect the backgrounds and unique experience of those you interact with before making assumptions. Beyond all, thank you for offering up your home to me this summer while I figured out the rest of my life.
If there's one piece of advice I could give to underclassmen, It would be to take advantage of getting to know your professors. They're a lot more real than we think at first, and they understand a lot more about us than we think they do. After all, they were students once too. In addition, we constantly disregard the value of their institutional memory. We are here for four years. Some of them have been here for 40. Green was here when Parkhurst was stormed during the anti-Vietnman protests in the 1970s, when a group of students destroyed the shanties set up on the green to protest the College's investment in South African apartheid.
Instead of critiquing and demonizing professors who have supported the Real Talk Dartmouth movement over past weeks, perhaps we should engage in conversation with them, ask them why they choose to support the causes they do. I guarantee they will have answers that will shed new light on our assumptions. Campus issues do not only affect students systems of power that disenfranchise students are mirrored in the faculty, and we would be daft to assume that the "isms" exist only in regard to our peers. Whether it is the power dynamic between different departments or interactions between individuals, professors are not immune to these dynamics of privilege. While students cannot fully understand the specific ways that faculty are oppressed and faculty cannot fully understand students' experiences, we can still look to them for insight and perspective.
In his op-ed, Green wrote that "a commitment to changing the world and practical skills for doing so can be harmful" without a sense of personal identity and a moral basis to guide those skills. I agree. I came to Dartmouth confident, excited and disturbingly naive. I will leave humbled, weary and hopefully a little bit more informed. I know that I won't remember everything I learned at Dartmouth, but I only hope that I have found some sort of moral ground or sense of identity that will make me continue questioning my assumptions, choices and actions in the "real world."
So if I give any advice as I say goodbye, it is to find these gems. Sign up for "Telling Stories for Social Change" (it's a CI and ART distrib!) this fall with Hernandez. Take "Kierkegaard and Existentialism" (it's a W and TMV!) with Green this winter. I promise it's worth it.
