classes@dartmouth

No matter what time of year, no matter how early I've gone to bed, no matter how gorgeous the day, 8:45 always seems like a terrifically early time to wake up. Last night, sitting in my dorm with my two best friends, classes seemed a very distant thing; something that, if you don't think about, won't happen right away. But there was the sound of my alarm nonetheless, and there I was laying in bed and staring at the ceiling.

I thought I had a class at 10:00 (at Dartmouth, we call them 10's, but don't let that fool you: classes at 12:30 are called 12's, and there's no 1.) called American Drama, a mid-level English class that I couldn't wait to begin. But something compelled me to check my schedule one final time before I ran out the door, and much to my surprise, my former 10 had been switched to a 12, thus conflicting with another class: Physics 1.

I was sitting on the kitchen counter in the commons last night, watching the water boil in my spinning ceramic bowl through the glass of the microwave. My friend, seeing my unbroken gaze, hopped up on the counter next to me, placed a loving arm about my shoulders and said as though explaining to a child, "Alexis, this is science!" We laughed, but there was some truth to the joke: I've never been good at science; I don't even really understand how water boils beyond the fact of a boiling point. And so, whether to quell the jokes (it's only invited more), prove myself (hopefully), or expand my interest (so far, so good), I decided to take Understanding the Universe: Physics through the Ages. As the department affectionately calls it, "Physics for Poets"; as my friends affectionately call it, "Baby Physics."

And so, at 12:30 (after biking furiously across campus in an attempt to attend Introductory Psychology, a 10 that I had discovered online at 9:55 this morning), I walked up the steps of Wilder Hall, a building I've never been inside located in a section of campus I've never been to, passing students I didn't recognize, and, of course, got lost on the way to the classroom. I found it, and sat down as one of two professors began explaining the goal of the course. As I scanned the syllabus -- discoveries and milieus of Aristotle, Newton, Kepler, Einstein -- I thought of my father, who loves physics almost as much as he loves history, or perhaps the other way around. I thought of my friends, who think of me as someone who fits in on the stage, or in the English library. (When I told my best friend I was going to the class, he paused, and burst out laughing. "What?" I asked him. "I just can't imagine you in a science classroom," he answered between chuckles.) I thought of how, if I did well in the class, if I followed something I was interested in that wasn't typical, how proud they would all be -- how proud I would be.

The only minor setback came when I went to Wheelock Books, the second-story bookstore where everyone gets their supplies for classes. I passed the shelf stocked with the books required for American Drama. A whole shelf. A whole, floor to ceiling shelf of books for one class. Plays by Williams, Hughes, Mamet... I looked on them lovingly, imagining how wonderful it would be to own all of those books, to buy them all at once, to have them, to flip through their pages and underline words and write in their margins -- I looked at the dull, heavy Physics book in my hands. I'll always have the joy of reading plays, I thought, but what luck to be able to learn the physics of how the curtain falls!

And so, a lesson about Dartmouth: although my friends tease me about my niche ("What can you do with a Comparative Literature major -- be a barista at Starbucks?") I know they also appreciate me for it, and for trying to go beyond it. College is the only time in your life when you're presented with a list of things you can learn, with no restrictions or restraints, and you're encouraged to follow your interest and find your passion. Coming in to Dartmouth, you don't have to declare a major or take core classes: you have distributive requirements designed to make students step outside their comfort zone and explore the different kinds of knowledge that this incredible institution has to offer. Dartmouth is about learning, not about fashioning a career; it's about taking advantage of a million opportunities, not just honing one skill; most of all, it's about taking pride in following your passion.