invincible@dartmouth

Well, blog-followers, it's the new year. We've made it through the first four minutes, with so many more four-minute intervals to go. I hope that none of you are reading this tonight, that you're all out cavorting and making resolutions and standing alongside the highway yelling at cars (or maybe that was my last new year's?). And beyond that, I hope that your new year is full of surprises, changes, joy, happiness, luck, adventure, and peace.

I can hear the fireworks going off from the city, though I can't see them through my window. I can't help but ignore how nervous I am writing this entry - you all usually give me such positive and encouraging feedback, and I truly mean it when I tell each and every one of you that those comments are the reason I keep writing. But, a few days ago, thanks to the wonders of the internet, someone anonymously said that my blog was poorly written. Others chimed in with negative feedback, not limited to my writing. I was completely caught off-guard - my family wanted to spend a pleasant afternoon with me; I only wanted to sulk, to hold a looking-glass up to my insecurities and try to patch them up by picking at them further. I have always taken comfort in my writing; through all of the extracurricular activities and hobbies into which my parents pushed me, writing has always made more sense than anything else. To hear that someone, anyone, didn't see that in my words, or couldn't at least respect my effort and my passion, cut me to the core.

I felt, dear blog-followers, like an idiot. All along I had thought that I was a great writer; that this blog was mere practice for the books, essays, criticism I would write later; that the comments I got on my English papers were a more important source of self-esteem and self-worth than any sort of great social success. And yet, there I was, staring dumbfounded at those simple words, "poorly-written blog," and the subsequent flippant remarks that followed, wondering where I had gone wrong.

It took a day or two before I began to realize that I hadn't gone wrong at all - that as much as I could resent myself for thinking I was or ever could be something greater than I am, or others for doubting me, nothing would change. Regardless of how sincerely and earnestly I try, nothing I do will ever be met with universal appeal. And those few (or many!) who don't agree, who disregard, who don't understand, who write off... they will always be there. And I will always be here. And if I let those few (or many!) keep me from being here, then I've lost - I'm lost.

When you live not for others, but for yourself; when you conduct yourself in a manner with which you are comfortable above all else; when you take risks for the personal reward; when you succeed and share your success with no one; this is perhaps when it is most difficult to receive uninvited criticism. But from that vantage point within yourself, it is also perhaps easiest then to brush that criticism aside - if you are for you, then nevermind when others expect anything else.

So: may you keep this rambly, nervous advice in mind as you make your way through all the decisions, dilemmas, debaucheries, and delights that this new year will invariably bring. May you meet them all smiling.

finals@dartmouth

I remember last term around this time, blogging spiritedly about how difficult my finals period was, and how happy I was for it to be over, how I had fallen asleep almost instantly on my best friend's floor - it was all so romanticized, glossed and therefore glossy, but not deliberately, per se; that was my Dartmouth: an idealized everything, a finals period that was made that much better by my thinking it was challenging.

Well, my dear and devoted readers (to whom I feel the need to apologize each and every time I post for not posting often enough), this finals period was different. As I walked to Collis at 1:00 this afternoon, it struck me that this was the first time in five days - five days, mind you - that I had been awake when the sun was up. I had not, with the exception of biking blearily back to my dorm from breakfast at 8:00 am, been outside during the day.

I wish that I could explain this finals period to you day-by-day, but each day is a blur, sliding seamlessly into the next, the day bumping elbows with the night before one, after bristling with the impoliteness of the gesture, lets the other pass, a stranger into a crowded movie theatre, lost amongst a thousand twinkling stars. I can recall snippets, though, and perhaps those are my favorites to recall anyway:

...sitting at a study carrel on the fourth floor of the library, looking wearily over to my friend sitting next to me and climbing defeated into his lap to sleep for some indefinite amount of time, waking up only to see that the sun, from some invisible angle, had thought to light up the sky as though from under the earth itself, a faint and dimly-pulsing blue irradiating through the windows and illuminating my unfinished paper...

...waking up yesterday at 5:00 pm, struck by the inexplicable fear that for whatever reason, I no longer existed - I simply wasn't - and imploring someone to come talk to me once I had made the long and repetitive trek to the library in order to reassure me that I was, in fact, still alive and existing as a social creature, despite the fact of my newfound nocturnal nature; him meeting my perplexed and beaten gaze and saying plainly 'give up! sometimes you just can't write a good paper,' and me taking this as a dare, as a challenge to finish, to be done, at least; writing five pages in the next hour and a half, jamming my headphones in my ears and blasting an old Cake album to which I swiveled and danced in my chair as I added my final citations, knowing I was done - done, done, done, at last! - and wandering downstairs to disrupt one of the quietest parts of the library with a deliberately loud and hysterical conversation about, of all things, pudding...

...my best friend attempting to make me tea, a small gesture to return the favor of my buying her her favorite snacks; she inadvertently dumping the majority of a pitcher of half-and-half into my cup, turning my deep-brown tea a sickening white color; me taking her by the scruff of her neck and giving her well-deserved nougies; she running away laughing without another word...

...a two-hour conversation about the Dartmouth-y-ness of Dartmouth; the good, the bad, the inexplicable, the terrible and wonderful and strange things it had done to us, whether we could possibly manage to love it after all-this-time...

...wandering down to the second floor at 4:30 am to find my best friend tinkering with Computer Science-y things, and asking him to open Lou's with me (in Dartmouth-speak, this means going to Lou's, a diner in town, as soon as it opens, which happened to be 6:00 am); we had promised each other all term, and never did anything about it, but something about the prospect of French toast at the end of an all-nighter seemed too iconic and delicious to pass up; biking down main street trying to cast our friends as the characters in Harry Potter; nearly passing out face-down in our plates of scrambled eggs in our unmitigated exhaustion; sitting at the Top of the Hop and writing the final sentences of a paper on film-as-simulacrum...

...sitting in Robinson Hall at 3:00 am, all of us staring blankly at one another, or at our computer screens; for a moment, eyes meeting, a pause, and then the next logical step of 'Feliz Navidad' being played on full volume, singing along in horrendous accents through the entire thing, and subsequently returning to our work with hardly another word...

Staying up until dawn for five nights in a row is a beautiful thing, however horrifying and reality-bending and, at times, unnecessary, it may be - but I couldn't have done it if not for these moments, these people who I adore for their ability to appear at just-the-right-moment, to provide distraction or reassurance or even just tea and cookies; to be there for me. As the light fades (so early!) over the glimmering Christmas lights strung deliberately upon the Hanover trees to look so-haphazard, I think: only one more final to go. Only one more paper to write. Only a few more days until I go home. I wish I could make this last longer.

rambling@dartmouth

It's 3:27 am, that blurry line between Friday night and Saturday morning. I should probably not be writing a post right now. If anything, I should be sleeping, or writing the paper that was due for my English class a week ago, or convincing myself that lamenting the fact that EBAs is closed won't make it any less closed (if you come here, you'll understand).

But, as the term is drawing to a close, and as I can't seem to find inspiration to do much of anything during the day, I suppose: why not. Why not, indeed? The theme of this term, if I might be so bold to say so. But, truly, the inspiration for this post comes from a conversation:

"How are you doing?" She asked so earnestly.
"I'm alright..." I answered, ambivalent.
"Just alright?"
"No," I paused. "You know what, I'm great. It's like it's the middle of the Great Depression and I happened to go to a really good party. That's how I feel."
She laughed and touched my arm sympathetically.

Almost every day someone says to me something along the lines of, "Alexis, your life is ridiculous." And I always laugh and take it as a compliment, whether or not it was intended that way. But it's true- this term my life has been ridiculous. And most of the moments of joy I've had are just like going to a really good party in the midst of a really bad time. It's not Dartmouth's fault; it's not anyone's fault- not even mine, although sometimes I have a hard time convincing myself. Dartmouth is strange in that for all of the obstacles its thrown in my path this term, its given me just has many hands to help me over them. At my moments of disillusionment with the people or attitudes of Dartmouth, I happen to run into someone who proves me wrong.

I think that this post is fast losing its coherency. I'm too exhausted to draw a general conclusion about Dartmouth from this post- perhaps only to say that I don't think there are general conclusions to be drawn. I've felt terrifically lost this term, and although I've found my way to a few footholds, I don't see any cohesiveness to them. All I know is that it's 3:54 in the morning, and I just spent the night dancing to a cover version of the Ghostbusters theme song. My life is, indeed, ridiculous.

adventures@dartmouth

"So," he dared me to answer, "what's the greatest adventure you've been on all term?"
I paused. Words, which so often enter uninvited and without knocking through the door of my consciousness, would not come.
"Well..." I began, with that typical, meaningless word.
I wracked my brain -- had I really gone through so much of the term without going on an adventure? Last year was all adventures! And yet, in that short and confining space of pause, I kept coming back to conversations: in my room, on the Green, in Collis, in class, on walks, in the elevator.
My tone changed: "I've had a lot of incredible conversations this term. They're the most adventurous things I've done!" I laughed, hardly believing that I, fearless conversationalist, self-described people-meeting enthusiast, could think conversations to be befitting of the category of adventure.

And yet, the late nights, the long breakfasts, the getting-to-know, the re-learning, the exchanging of stories, the slow peeling-back of layers that hide The Things Not To Share Yet... what could be more worthy of being called adventure than these? This has been one of my main points of concern this term, the thought that lingers a bit too long, the truth I would rather not believe; that is, what do my connections with people truly mean?

My friend described it well when he said, "You have so many friends, and yet I think you believe that all of those relationships are superficial. You say hello to people so eagerly, and it's so nice and typical-Alexis, but I can't help but wonder: what's behind that?"

What is behind that? Even in this charged writing, this internet-equivalent of a friendly-Collis-hello, there must be something at the core (or, as we say in Comp Lit, at the end of the signifying chain). One of the most difficult realizations for me this term was that, at times, even in what would seem on paper to be the most sincere and heartfelt interactions there was, in truth, nothing there. I was rehearsing a play whose lines changed with each encounter, but whose essential structure remained the same; I was walking through a schema which had only inadvertently retained meaning as a result of its continued repetition. And, in truth, I was sickened by myself, disgusted that such a profound believer in authenticity could behave so inauthentically, just for the sake of experience -- and that's all it could be: experience for experience's sake.

So, there are two conclusions to which I would like to lead you: first, be careful. Be careful, for the habits you adopt, by the very fact of them becoming habits, can fast become empty gestures. Do not be afraid to refill them, to take them out of habituation and set them spinning into spontaneity. Cast off your schemas, and risk finding a little truth. Second, truth is the key to adventure. The conversations to which my thoughts kept turning were those that were the most truthful, the most resistant to habituation or categorization. Opening yourself up to people -- that is, giving and receiving truth -- is the greatest adventure I can think of.

I need not say, as I do in conclusion of every post, it seems, that Dartmouth is a wonderful place for adventure. I will instead say that Dartmouth is a dangerous place for habits; that is, in a place that is otherwise so chaotic and fast-paced, we (the royal we!) find ourselves categorizing those few things over which we can have control (which, in fact, we shouldn't control at all): namely, interactions, interjections, conversations, interpersonalizations. In a place that's free and open enough for adventure, dare to be brave enough to always be adventuring.

dreaming@dartmouth

These past few weeks have been without a doubt the most difficult of the term. Midterms, moving across campus (it's a long story.), losing friends, missing home -- I could handle everything on its own, but together, things kept bursting from the seams that I had taken so much time to stitch. Running around Baker Beach, dragging my best friend by the arm, spinning in circles, screaming to the stars; sitting on the Green and watching as the sun let go its hold on the daytime sky with fiery fingers slipping and catching amongst the leaf-forgotten trees; the hopeless hours in the library, or the extra time spent over lunch, work thrown away in favor of conversation; the first and last cigarette smoked hopelessly and absentmindedly under a tree at four in the morning, the night pulsing thick with muffled music. These were the moments from which I yearned to extract meaning, and from which meaning would not come. These were the moments I remember, not for their being, but for their should-have-been. These were the moments that I had taught myself to appreciate, the Important Things that became banalized so quickly.

And yet, this morning was different: the light curled on the edges of the leaves scattered yellow-and-orange about the ground, and the sun shone hesitatingly through the clouds and brushed the sheer white of my curtains, lighting up the string of prayer flags that looped under the top windowpane. I woke up terrified. As silly as it sounds: I had a dream that I had been kicked out of Dartmouth and that I had to transfer to the University of Alabama. My mind had taken me through the elaborate and specific instances of moving out and moving in, of navigating a strange and unwelcoming library, of seeking friends and finding strangers, of pursuing passions only to have them ignored. I can recall a sense of longing that was overwhelmingly present throughout the dream, the continuous 'when can I get back to Dartmouth?', 'Dartmouth will take me back, right?' Upon waking up, before I had quite come to grips with my familiar surroundings, that longing still lingered.

As I went through that tried-and-true schema of my morning routine, a sense of calm unlike any I had felt all term trickled through me. I was here. I was here in my room, in a building, in a cluster, at a college in New Hampshire unlike any other college in the world. At the risk of falling back on clichés, I'll say this: in the face of my newfound (and strangely found) appreciation for Dartmouth, all of my worries seemed a bit more manageable -- and, in the best cases, insignificant.

Now this is not to say, of course, that if you find yourself at the University of Alabama you have consequentially landed yourself in the middle of an existential crisis -- on the contrary. Whatever college you go to, appreciate it. Take a moment, when you're feeling overwhelmed, underwhelmed, or perhaps not enough of anything at all, to reflect on the things that are important to you about the community of which you are a part. Take pride and find solace in your ability to be a contributing individual within that community, a person among a hundred or a thousand other people who makes the place you live what it is. For me, to think about Dartmouth in that way is both thrilling and calming, like that quiet fire that burns in your chest right before something great is about to happen.

back@dartmouth

I think there's been too much space between posts. Too much time has passed to be able to go back, and with fierce authenticity re-present each Important Event as it occurred in its entirety - render it meaningful in retrospect, draw a broader conclusion about the past when I'm so focused-looking forward. Strange, to think that I wrote the previous post while I was still at home. And now, sitting here in my dorm eating a box of cookies, pajama'd and crosslegged, circling the possibility of going to bed sometime before 4 am (a first for this week), I know that I'm writing this post from home, too.

My friends who are freshmen ('14s- hooray!) have been recently expressing to me feelings of homesickness.
"I don't know, I miss my friends, I miss my hometown," she said.
I counter with, "Well, my friends and I have drifted apart, and I like this place much better than my home town."
"You don't understand- I've lived in the same house since I was little and- "
"So have I." I cut her off, more for me than for her.

What is it, then, that keeps me from feeling homesick? Because, at the end of the day, I have everything I love right here. My parents are a phonecall away, my best friends are a bikeride down the block, the sun rises so beautifully outside my window every morning. Knowing these things makes me realize: feeling at home is not necessarily feeling happy as much as it is feeling content - satisfied, but just enough to want a bit more; safe, but just enough to risk pushing the bounds a bit further; happy, but just as much with the possibility as with the fact.

Yes, I am no longer a freshman, searching frantically for a foothold, or resigned to not-knowing, or waiting for opportunities to present themselves; I no longer so easily believe the stereotypes presented to me, no longer consider homework all-important, no longer linger at the threshold of Food Court with a look of terror splashed across my brimming cheeks. But yes, too, that I am a sophomore; I am of the youngest class of upperclassmen, the youngest to be able to do what the oldest does, the least experienced to be presented with the most experiences, I am the 1,094th of 1,094 of my peers to stand at the threshold of leadership, of responsibility, of knowing, changing, growing, labeling, erasing, destroying, and creating. Last year it was my chance to stand in awe of of what lay before me; now, it is my turn to change what others see before them.

Home - that grey, white-walled homage to childhood in Maryland. Home - the endless, rolling, fiery hills, ignited by autumn, tumbling across New England; the proud, defiant brick and the obdurate, pensive glass that give me place; the thousands of smiles and hands, waved and raised, bikes, peddled and parked, the affectionate embraces of friendship, the sound of music with your eyes closed; these great testaments to possibility; this small college on the hill.

summer@home

Well, readers, I've been a terrible reciprocator. You, checking my blog for updates; me, reclined on my couch making my bleary way through seasons upon seasons of Showtime dramadies. I suppose my lack of blogging comes from two things: one, a lack of content, and two, a lack of desire to face that lack of content. In other words, I haven't had anything to say, which, for a writer, is the most terrifying feeling of all. But as summer draws to a close and the inevitable nostalgia of leaving home sets in, a few ideas have come to mind. After this post, I promise more to come about details of my adventures outside of Dartmouth, but for now, some thoughts on summer:

By the end of spring term, I was fairly excited to go home and see my childhood friends. I drove to their houses, to parks, to playgrounds and restaurants and theatres, and we talked and laughed, struggling to relate about college, but unheroically falling back to the only thing we had in common any more: other people. As summer wore on, I found myself more and more often involved in conversations about people we went to high school with, their personal lives, their own private dramas that somehow still seemed to be on display. My efforts to steer conversations back into the present, or even the future, were mostly ignored.

Eventually, and I suppose I should've seen it coming, I became one of those staged, relatable people - one of these conversation-fillers who is talked about in their absence, reviewed and scrutinized, in an attempt at what, I don't know. As this gradually unfolded, I began to hear what my friends truly had started to think of me. "You've changed so much since going to college, Alexis." The same refrain, over and over; the adjectives "selfish," "unpleasant", and "egotistical" sprinkled in for good measure.

As much as it hurt that the people I'd considered my friends since the age of six decided that they were better off without me, I was also strangely relieved. I realized it was because I had learned something about friendship at Dartmouth that I never managed to pick up at home: friends are people on whom you can rely and who can rely on you; those with whom you have a mutual trust and understanding that there is something of value not only in each of you as individuals, but something greater created by your friendship; those who will love you in all moods, who don't judge you, but support you. All of these things are true about the wonderful people I consider my friends at Dartmouth, but true about only a handful of people at home. It dawned on me that my childhood friends seemed better suited to be acquaintances, since I'd never really trusted them enough to be anything more.

This is not to say that once you leave home, you should leave your friends behind - true friendships will endure through college and beyond, regardless of when they were formed. But it is to say that a natural drifting-apart, or the realization that your friendships weren't what you thought they were, is conducive to positive growth. You will be presented with so many opportunities at Dartmouth to expand and change who you are as a person - for better and for worse. It's up to you to choose which of those to take advantage of, and what friends you might gain and let go in the process.