Last Sunday, I sat down to send an email out to my friends about my thesis presentation. Among others, I invited some of my freshman floormates, my fellow directorate members of The Dartmouth, my boss at Dartmouth Dining Services, my government major advisor and the executive chef of Murphy's. It was typing each of these names in the BCC column of the Blitz that made me realize I have an extremely random and discordant mix of friendships. At Dartmouth, where students are encouraged right at the start of orientation to find their niche or their organization, it may seem counter-intuitive to say that my Dartmouth experience has been defined by my absence of feeling connected to a single group. But this has not only defined my Dartmouth experience it has enriched it.
When I came to Dartmouth, all I wanted was to feel accepted and validated by having my own group of friends. My sister, an '11, had found this amazing community in her a cappella group while she was here. I wanted that be it by joining an organization or finding a group of people I could be bonded for life with. I joined organizations, and I made friends. But I never got that feeling of my identity being intimately linked to one of those organizations, and I realized that I had formed friendships in a lot of different ways, and there was no way I was going to be able to create one group from such a diverse array.
As I went through Dartmouth, I started to explore my passion for food through a lot of individual endeavors. I started a column in the Mirror where I designed meals that could be made out of only DDS ingredients, I was a student consultant for Dartmouth Dining Services and I worked as an assistant cook at Murphy's all very fun, but highly individualized activities. I distinctly remember feeling incredibly lonely and unfulfilled, that I had never found that organization or group here with which I could form a really strong connection. Everyone else seemed to have collective songs, bequests and pong tournaments things you can't really do when your colleagues are at least 20 years older than you. I felt like I was missing out, like I was doing all of this stuff by myself on the side while everyone else was forming friendships through their insular groups.
My inability to form strong group ties has bothered me for my entire Dartmouth career and probably will for my entire life. I tend to blame all of my failures on this trait. But as I glanced around the room at the various sub-sections of campus represented in my friends at my thesis presentation on Tuesday, I was, for the first time, content with my approach to life. I have an amazing set of friends, each of whom plays a unique role in my life. Not all of my friends get along. In fact, some of my closest friends are literally enemies with each other but that's okay. Similarly, through my activities, I have paved a path that has never been paved before. That path has been shaped by my own unique needs and interests, and it has taken me all the way until the end of my senior spring to be proud of this.
In high school, I did activities because I thought I should, and I was in a friend group because I wanted to be in a friend group. But here, I have accepted and embraced the fact that I have always forged ties that are uniquely my own. At Dartmouth, I drove a van full of DDS employees to a dining hall convention in Springfield, Mass., and got inspired to write a cookbook. At Dartmouth, I go out every Friday with a lingering French fry smell on my clothes from my shift at Murphy's. At Dartmouth, almost every month I become close to a new person that inspires and amazes me.
One of my dad's all-time favorite shows is "Sex and the City," and one of the wisest things he (read: Carrie Bradshaw) has ever told me is that out of all the relationships you can have in life, the most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. In the midst of worrying about trying to define myself by a larger group, I tried to run away from what makes me, well, me. I forgot about my relationship with myself. College is, in the end, all about doing you. There is no right or wrong way to "do" Dartmouth, but I really think that the key to finding happiness here is to always be doing nothing but that which nourishes your relationship with yourself in the most fulfilling and uncompromising way. And if you can surround yourself with people and activities that fit, as Carrie says, the you that you love, then there's really nothing more you can ask for from a college experience.
