dimensions@dartmouth

Well, you found us out: Dartmouth is, in fact, a musical. To all of the prospies that came and slept on our floors, ate at our tables and explored our home, thank you for letting us share Dartmouth with you. And a bit of extra thanks to those of you who tentatively approached me with the words, "You write a blog, don't you?" It was so good to know you considered me in your experience of Dartmouth.

We the lucky ones -- the already matriculated -- got to see the Dimensions Show a few days before your arrival, before the majority of my close friends disappeared into bespectacled, confused, shy personas, only to emerge two days later as quite the opposite. Watching the Dimensions show from the other side of the commitment date was deeply reassuring. I remember my experience of Dimensions: I established a group of close friends early on (who, strangely enough, already seemed to know each other rather well) and spent the majority of my time with them, save wandering the campus with a breathless mix of hesitance and curiosity and fighting my way through lines at the dining halls, mortified by my lack of savvy. When I sat down in Alumni Hall (there were less of us last year) next to my new friends, I was warned, "This is going to be so boring!" And a long speech began, and suddenly, music began to blare and all of my new friends tore off their clothes to reveal green-soaked garments and sang to us about how terribly gullible we all were.

I sat, my knees tucked up to my chest, wondering why a college would go through so much trouble to write silly parody songs about food, roommates, and the prevalence of alcohol -- Dartmouth isn't really like this, I remember thinking. No college is like this, and certainly no college students are this excited to be going to school together. I appreciated the intense creativity and passion of the performers, but I couldn't reconcile it with its apparent implausibility. But this year, watching my fellow freshmen dance and scream and wear their cut-offs and ski gear with pride, I realized -- it wasn't fake, people actually love Dartmouth this much.

And it's true: although the world presented in the Dimensions show is one without social pressures or time constraints, in essence, it is our Dartmouth -- the home we've come to love, the place where anything is possible, the school that provides every possible opportunity to its intelligent, creative, compassionate students. When you crossed the Green and were met with yells of "Come to Dartmouth!" they were sincere. One of the most wonderful things about the Dartmouth experience is that it's so much better when it's shared: we want you to come to Dartmouth because we know how happy anyone can be here, and we want to share that possibility with you. Dartmouth is more than a name, more than a part of a league -- although it is those things (and, unfortunately, those are the only things some people will see), it's so far beyond that. It's unpretentious, welcoming, vibrant, fascinating, and surprising -- it's our home, and we want it to be yours, too.