Both last year’s and this year’s Winter Carnival themes reflect the same attitude toward the colder months — winter is coming, and it’s going to be grim. Dartmouth students have a complex relationship with winter. Freshmen swear that their D-Plan will keep them out of Hanover each winter, while upperclassmen who find themselves stuck in Hanover grumble every time they fly in from warmer locales.
True, the weather between November and April legitimizes some of these grumbles. All of my memories of freshman winter lack any trace of sunshine. A grey haze hangs over all of them. Indeed, some of these memories are truly horrible. I will never forget the time I walked from Collis to the River apartments in the snow, with a smoothie in each hand (admittedly a bad choice) and had to spend 10 minutes warming my hands before I could feel them again. It seems like every Dartmouth student has a similar winter horror story.
At the same time, I like to believe that Dartmouth students do not think that the winter is as bad as they make it out to be. The pervading hatred of winter, then, is an affect. We screenshot the negative temperatures with a strange sort of joy, just like we post Facebook statuses about seeing the sun rise from the 1902 Room. On the surface, both of these experiences are truly miserable. All-nighters are never worth it, and negative 10 degrees feels as painful as it sounds. Yet the students who post about their study habits and the weather they brave seem to derive a strange sort of pleasure from “surviving” under these conditions.
Thinking about winter as something that one survives, though, is the very root of the problem. This mindset establishes an adversarial relationship between the weather and the student, when this does not need to be the case. Yes, I understand that seasonal affective disorder is a real condition. I also understand how difficult it is to get out of bed when there is a foot of snow outside. But buy a SAD lamp and bear with me — I think that each winter has the potential to be not only enjoyable, but the best term of the year. Enjoying winter depends entirely on how you approach it.
Some people take a difficult course load in the winter, which oddly enough does make the longer nights more bearable. There is a reason we all came to a small college town in New England: what is more conducive to acquiring knowledge than subzero wind chills and the prospect of a cozy armchair? Curling up and reading a book in Sanborn Library while watching the wind blow snowflakes through the window may be cliché, but it is incredible. Perhaps this is why during the winter, more than any other term, I feel connected to Dartmouth students of generations past. Perhaps the very chair in Sanborn that I chose was once occupied by Theodor Geisel (because you cannot feel like a true Dartmouth student without referencing Dr. Seuss).
No other term is better suited to holing up in the library, but also no other term is better suited to getting outside. Sure, in the spring, summer and fall Dartmouth students can hike, run and swim. But in the winter, Dartmouth students can try things that they could not do if they went to school elsewhere — say at a school where the low in February is 30 degrees. Go cross-country skiing on the golf course, ice skate on Occom Pond, or snowshoe up Mount Moosilauke. Do anything that will help you actually appreciate the ice and snow. And even if you don’t feel adventurous, the long, frigid walks to class are better if you take time to look around. Dartmouth is stunning, especially in the snow.
What better time to learn to love winter than Winter Carnival itself? That is what the weekend is about. Try the polar bear plunge or the human dogsled race, and above all, come out to support the ski team. If the winter brings our hardest days, there’s no better way to go through them than as a community.
