I couldn’t even tell you the number of times my editors cut out the Dartmouth cliches I used in my first Mirror articles during freshman year. References like #facetime, the weather being unbelievably cold and all forms of “so/too real” were akin to profanity. But for me, these were the easy jokes because as a freshman, I understood them. I could even execute them. And it never occurred to me how little insight they conveyed to the upperclassmen that had heard the punch lines thousands of times before I ever stepped on campus.
Having received these criticisms, I spent my first seven terms writing for The D in an uphill battle to be original. My intros became funnier, my puns cleverer and my questions harder. By the end of sophomore summer, when I hadn’t left Hanover except for the 10 weeks after freshman spring, I started to finally feel like I had it all figured out.
Then, in my eighth term, I went somewhere else, and a British professor on the Government foreign study program made me realize something. A scholar on modern warfare, and almost as old as warfare itself, he told my classmates in his posh, impassive voice the truth about saying things that hadn’t already been said.
“You will probably think that you have brilliant ideas, but I can almost guarantee they aren’t yours,” he scoffed. “You will never write or think or say anything that someone hasn’t thought first.”
With a slight smile, he swished his vodka.
“And if you do, I’ll be happy to borrow it.”
The professor seemed to imply that an idea isn’t worthwhile if it occurred to someone else first. The more I’ve thought about his concept recently, the less I’ve bought it. If it really is the case that an infinite number of people across time and space all reach the same conclusion, it has to be a good one. It’s statistically unlikely that everyone is messing up.
Maybe I have too much faith in humanity, but I think that’s why the same anecdotes, metaphors and critiques of the College appear consistently throughout the years – because to some large number of people, they ring true. The things that are relevant, the jokes that everyone on campus will always get even when they cease to be funny, are bound to be cliched. It’s only because they’re accurate.
And so, after being off for two terms now, I couldn’t be more sure that the ultimate Dartmouth cliche is the truest of them all — the Dartmouth bubble is too real.
You’ve heard the concept before in its most basic terms — the joke (or reality) that Hanover exists in isolation from the rest of the world as a snowy pocket of New England that does not give to or take much from its surroundings. The students are magically able to reduce the scope of their concerns to what is happening directly on campus. The jury is still out on whether the result is an environment of diligent academia or indulgent ignorance. Most likely, it’s both.
But while being away from Hanover has perhaps made me more aware of current events and less concerned with which frats are on probation, the dramatic increase in how often I watch the news isn’t the reason why I am suddenly convinced that a force field surrounds the far side of Occom Pond.
Everyone locked away in the stacks right now probably has a bone to pick with this, and I respect where they’re coming from, but being in the bubble just makes things easier. If you’re camped out in Baker-Berry, you know why you’re sitting there and what you’re doing. You’re going to get through this chapter, so you can take that test, so you can pass this class, so you can fulfill your CI, so you can graduate.
I have an internship, so I can perhaps get a letter of recommendation from an unknown person who will recommend me as capable of doing something I’m not even sure I want to do, so I can put it on a resume, so one day I can perhaps apply to ... Well. You got me there.
I suppose the best way to describe the feeling of being off and outside the bubble for the first time is that you are suddenly terrified of running out of time to figure out what you want to do when you grow up. The bubble, an environment I didn’t even fully realize I was in for two years, made me feel like I knew exactly what I was doing with my life just because I knew what I was doing with it in the moment. The environment shrunk the scope of goals and obstacles to manageable benchmarks. For all of their stresses, terms at Dartmouth provide absolute stability -— 10 weeks of knowing exactly what you have to get done and the amount of time you have to do it.
I’ve never been one for nostalgia, and my musings on how blissful and easy life is at Dartmouth are absolutely a function of me being away from campus for an unreasonably long time. To be honest, the longer I spend in the real world, the more I am convinced that the simplistic and artificial framework that the bubble creates for measuring success is likely problematic. For those of you in need of a reminder of what the other side looks like, I encourage you to step outside your comfort zone, reach for the stars and do something every day that scares you. And I mean it.
Call that one a cliche, and I’m calling BS. Advice is one thing that should never be original.
Sara Kassir ’15 is a new columnist for The Mirror. Her column will rotate with “What Have We Done?”
