TTLG: Unconnecting the Stars
It was my second week back from First-Year Trips. I’d moved into my dorm early for the debate team pre-season, but with Orientation Week approaching, my floormates were finally arriving.
It was my second week back from First-Year Trips. I’d moved into my dorm early for the debate team pre-season, but with Orientation Week approaching, my floormates were finally arriving.
During two separate performance reviews, bosses have told me to stop apologizing.
When I came to Dartmouth, I thought I was ready to do the worst academically. Call it low self- esteem, call it imposter syndrome — a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
In case you haven’t yet received Dartmouth paraphernalia with “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” splashed across the cover, it’s time you learned about your new favorite author. Also known as Dr. Seuss, Theodor Seuss Geisel graduated from Dartmouth in 1925 before he went on to write over 60 books.
Whether it’s your freshman dorm, a bench on the Green or a library study nook, you will soon find a place at Dartmouth that you connect to. But first, you will get lost more times than you can count, even after you ask five upperclassmen for directions. Here’s to minimizing your confusion and providing basic details about the most important campus locations to know!
Once upon a time, some Dartmouth fraternity brothers playing table tennis rested their mugs of beer on the table while they played. A few stray ping pong balls landed in the cups by divine accident, until someone proposed that it was more fun to aim for the mugs of beer themselves.
Glittering trays of chicken nuggets, steaming hot waffles fresh off the press and ice cream — so much ice cream — await behind the doors to Foco. At the start of your freshman fall, I’m sure you’ll eat one, two, three or maybe four meals a day in Dartmouth’s only all-you-can-eat dining location.
It’s strange to think that for us, it’s over. We’ve felt the heat of the bonfire, witnessed the stars while lying on the grass of the golf course, studied through late nights into the early mornings, walked across the snow-covered Green — and now, we’ve walked across the graduation stage. It’s strange to think that, for you, Dartmouth is just beginning.
As you transition to Dartmouth life, there’s something you need to study up on. No, it’s not prepping for your pre-med classes or trying to learn the alma mater (no one really knows that anyway), but it is much more essential: you gotta learn the lingo.
When people find out that I go to Dartmouth, they often ask me, “How do you like it?” Even though I should know how to respond as a rising senior, it’s a question that I still struggle with.
As a new freshman class arrives to campus every year, students come bearing differing academic visions for their next four years at Dartmouth: some pre-med, some engineering, some humanities, others perhaps more focused on languages or social sciences. However, many — like me — come to Dartmouth their freshman fall knowing next to nothing about what to pursue academically or professionally.
Freshman orientation: For most, it’s a time of awkward introductions, forced smiles, getting lost and, if you’re lucky, the feeling that you might just have met someone who could be your new best friend.
The painter. The poet. The nerd who owns it. The swimmer. The hiker. The party-all-nighter. The baker. The maker. The family caretaker. The bundle-of-nerves-for-this-term-long-icebreaker.