Marissa Knodel
Alex DiBranco
Last fall, my poetry professor told me: you like to label yourself.
You figure it’s a bad sign when that comment comes up in a creative writing workshop—poetry should be more about exploring your identity than rigidly identifying yourself—but her insight was spot-on, as always. I like to define myself, to be open and assertive—occasionally even too aggressively—about what I believe in. I had prefaced my comments on a poem with, “I probably like this because I’m an atheist”; I labeled myself at other times as a feminist, an activist, or a New Yorker. I have a “Proud to be a Feminist” sticker on my laptop, wear a PRIDE bracelet on my wrist, and recently added the term “sex positive” to my collection—and for this last one I need to thank Cody Lavender ’10, who (half-)jokingly called sex positivism his religion.
But thinking of Cody, I remember how desperately I sometimes don’t want to be identified.
Danny Rangel
The moose looked at me like he might just want to devour my face. He wandered about, sniffing at the grass, staring at cars, ignoring the Dartmouth students crowding around—most of them, anyway. He kept glancing back in my direction, seemingly debating which of my limbs would be the most delicious. I kept my distance—this giant beast of a thing looked like it could do some damage—but the students smiled and giggled and laughed at the moose, searching for signs of a possible (and deadly) charge at the crowd. But the moose just sauntered about, paying attention to no one, lost in its own lack of concern, the kind of confidence brought about by years of being the baddest motherfucker in the New Hampshire wilderness.
I was thus introduced to Hanover, the pinnacle of civilization, the place where a moose can so casually take up space between the East Wheelock residential cluster and the gym. During my first two years at Dartmouth, I can’t quite say I was as comfortable in Hanover as the giant moose.
Nathan Empsall
It’s hard to condense four years of Dartmouth into one senior article. I want to write about the politicians and journalists the New Hampshire primary brought to town. I want to sing praises of my favorite professors and staff members. I very much want to be the 84,173rd person to warn underclassmen of how little time they have left.
However, after four years, 26 DFP articles, 37 courses, and countless extracurricular activities, one of the most important things I’ve learned here is summed up not by a list of things I wish I’d done, but by a short quote from Philip Seymour Hoffman’s character in the movie Doubt (thank you, Dartmouth Film Society):
“Certainty is an emotion, not a fact.”
Raymond Rodriguez
During the summer before my senior year of high school, I received an invitation from an obscure place in Hanover, NH known as Dartmouth College. The invitation was to “Destination Dartmouth,” a 3-day program for promising students of color to visit the College and explore what it had to offer. I was blown away. Dartmouth offered everything I looked for in a college: excellent off-campus programs, extensive social justice and community service opportunities, and an intimate campus community where I would be more than just a number and instead an individual who could impact the lives of other students. I was ready to submit my application right away, but what I heard from some students made me question my Dartmouth experience.
Brittany Crosby
I don’t know exactly when it began. Maybe it was when people gushed over my Dartmouth sweatshirt while I rushed through Boston’s Logan Airport to catch a bus headed for my Freshman DOC trip. Or maybe it was when my peers would mock me when I did something they deemed odd: “You’re an Ivy League student and you don’t know how to cross the street?!” (As a matter of fact, I do know how to cross the street. I just like waiting for the walk signal —besides, I try to set a good example for the children). Whether it sprang from the positive comments or the negative backlash, I may never know. But some time after matriculation, perhaps during Orientation week, I realized that being a Dartmouth student was something to be proud of. I learned the alma mater quickly, throwing my arms around the shoulders of ’09s, ’08s, ’07s, ’06s and other alums, praising the granite in our muscles and our brains.
We all remember our first crush on Hanover: the quintessential New England town, small enough that everyone knows everyone else, the congenial aura of students and townies alike. Because I didn’t get a chance to visit Dartmouth before I decided to attend (for some reason, I thought the virtual tour would suffice), my introduction to Hanover was on a warm September day, the sunlight hours still long, the air lacking the crisp bite of autumn, the campus alive as people introduced each other with a “Hey, remember me? We’re Facebook friends. I saw that your favorite book is To Kill a Mockingbird and I also listen to Dave Matthews…” Oh, Hanover. It was love at first 5:45 wake up call.
Lydia Chammas
Today, I handed in my thesis—a monstrous, blood-sucking 150-page short story collection that consumed my life for five months—and now, in the wee hours of the morning after a margarita and a beer, I’m sitting down to write 1,500 words about my “Dartmouth experience.”
For some reason, my thesis seems like nothing compared to this. I pretty much made everything up in my thesis. Something tells me I can’t do that here.
