Dear Class of 2023,
Welcome to campus! It seems so long ago that the two of us first arrived for orientation — intimidated, excited and certainly a little nervous. As we carried our clothing bins up flights of stairs, we had no idea what to expect from Dartmouth.
After Trips, we hope you’re excited: excited to meet more of your classmates, to move into your dorm, to select your classes, to settle into the place that will be your home for the next four years. Maybe you made great friends on your trip and loved dancing the salty dog rag. But maybe, instead, you’re just tired or sore, or maybe you found that contra dancing isn’t your thing. Maybe, before reading another word of this issue, you just want to take a shower. That’s fine too.
Regardless of your Trips experience, at some point in the next four years you will likely experience both the ups and the downs of Dartmouth. You will have the highest highs here: sipping farmer’s market lemonade, dancing on pong tables or staying up late to watch the stars. And with the highs will come the lows: the times when you feel overwhelmed and just need to find a few minutes to yourself to go for a walk (or a “woccom,” one of many Dartmouth phrases you’ll soon learn).
But although it may not feel like it now, you’ll have plenty of time to settle in and make the most of Dartmouth. You’ll find your people to help you get through — on your floor, in your classes, in your extracurriculars. So, from us to you, best of luck finding the pieces of this school that suit you best.
When we got here two years ago, we turned to The Dartmouth’s Freshman Issue for a flavor of what we might expect for the next four years of our lives. This issue is not an exhaustive list of what you might need to know, but it does provide the answers to some of the questions we had before starting classes in the fall. Want to know how this massive operation called Trips came to be? How Dartmouth students interact with the surrounding community? How you might experience the Greek system this year if you can’t join a house? If you’ll be able to vote in New Hampshire? We’ve got you covered.
Maybe you’ll read this once and recycle it, or maybe, like us, you’ll save this issue and pick it up at the end of your sophomore summer, when you might want to sit and remember how it felt to arrive at this crazy place for the first time. We’ve been doing that a lot lately.
So happy reading, ’23s, and welcome home.
With love,
Abby and Eily
Eileen (Eily) Brady is a '21 from Chicago who studies government and romance languages. Eily loves travel, politics, iced tea and her dogs, Mac and Charlie. She is thrilled to be reporting the news for The Dartmouth.
