Stuff Dartmouth Kids Like: 10 Things We Love About Spring
10. Sundress day
9. Collis porch
8. No more frackets
Gone is the necessity of a liquid layer before you venture towards Webster Avenue. Gone is the drunken search through a mountain of coats at the end of your night. Gone are the frozen walks from frat row back to your room when it turns out that someone has stolen your fracket. Gone are all the blitzes about how Sloppy Sally lost her passport, driver’s license, Social Security card, birth certificate and her mother’s ring that’s been handed down for generations because all of those things happened to be in the black North Face that someone stole from her last night. Hallelujah!
7. Farmer’s market
The surest sign that spring has sprung is the appearance of the Hanover farmer’s market on the Green. Just as its disappearance heralds the oncoming winter, its return signals to Dartmouth students everywhere that spring is here to stay. Don’t miss the kettle corn and the lemonade, and play with the vendors’ dogs if you can.
6. Green Key Weekend
Everyone’s favorite big weekend, Green Key is a veritable bacchanalia of sun and (outdoor) fun. If Dartmouth presidents can call in favors to the weather gods for Dimensions at Dartmouth, they should be able to do it for Green Key too. There really isn’t anything I can say that will appropriately describe just how much fun this weekend is, but I will say that if you even think about staying in or clocking any serious time in the library, you will be missing out.
5. Barbecues
Grilled food + no. 4 (singalong songs) + no. 2 (day drinking) = perfection. There’s really not much else to say. Nothing screams “spring” more than sitting around on the lawn, slipping bratwursts and burgers to the dogs with the people you love.
4. Singalong music
People are probably at their most patriotic during the late spring and early summer. Obviously this peaks on July 4 and again during every Super Bowl/World Cup/Olympics (what up 12X), and what’s the best way to celebrate America? Singing along at the top of your lungs to classic songs that everyone loves. I love Bon Iver and the Magnetic Fields as much as the next girl, but all that emotional indie shit belongs in the winter. Summer is a time for Bruce and Creedence.
3. The Green
Do I even need to say it? There are so many things you can do on the Green. You can tan. You can play wiffle ball, or croquet, depending on how douchey you are. You can “work.” You can actually work. If you are a hot guy, you can take your shirt off and flex for all the ladies, gentlemen and Hanover residents. If you are a member of one of the categories listed, you can lie around watching all the hot guys flexing. What’s not to love?
2. Day drinking
Several of Spring term’s biggest day-drinking fests have already passed, but that’s no reason not to hang out on your favorite porch and help your friends kill a keg while watching the world go by. Day drinking is infinitely better than night drinking because you have so much more time to do it and no one is drinking because they need a liquid layer of warmth — see no. 8.
1. The weather
If there is one thing that Dartmouth kids never stop talking about, ever, it’s the weather. For socially crippled people everywhere else in the world, the weather is a conversation topic of last resort when your favorite TV show and the crazy-ass thing Kanye just tweeted have already been discussed. For us, talking about weather is a way of life. And now that it’s spring, the weather is also a source of (hopefully) happiness. Walk some dogs — they don't even have to be your dogs — in Pine Park. Swim in the river. You will finally be able to enjoy afternoons and spend them outside instead of curled up under a comforter in your room, wishing you had applied for Semester at Sea.