I'm Kennedy, a literature nerd and creative writer from the outskirts of Memphis. I'm also a senior here at Dartmouth. When I'm not working in admissions as a senior fellow, I'm a student employee at the library and a research and teaching assistant in the English department. I love music (I collect vinyl!) and analyzing teen drama TV (think Riverdale and Pretty Little Liars). I'm currently applying to law schools. I've had such a great time at Dartmouth and am excited to share that with you!
Professor McCann is my advisor, but that's not the only reason I took this class. Since it was a senior seminar with only 9 students, we got to dive deep into the fascinating material, including with Victorian-era pulp fiction books, advertisements, and psychological treatises, plus some good old fashioned canonical works like The Picture of Dorian Gray and Dracula. [Fun fact: I've read Dracula three times at Dartmouth... it's an English department favorite!]
WinterHanover, NH
This was an off term for me, but I love Hanover so much I hung around anyways! I worked for admissions and Baker-Berry Library, read a ton of J.G. Ballard, and stared out the window at the snow for an embarrassingly long amount of time. I also visited my parents in Tennessee during Christmas.
Professor Nachlis went out of his way to act as an unofficial pre-law advisor for all of us in this class, not only by introducing us to some of the most pressing issues in American government, but also by dedicating the final two weeks of class to a module called "Should you go to law school?" A question I was asking myself!
SummerHanover, NH
Another off term again, and this time I'm working full-time for admissions as a senior fellow! I'm also doing a lot of preliminary reading for my honors thesis. Anyone heard of Friedrich Kittler's Discourse Networks? Well, I'll have read it twice by the time this term is over.
One big thing scared me about Dartmouth: Greek Life.
I knew I didn't want to be involved in it. And yet, around 60% of campus is affiliated with a fraternity or sorority. I'm from the American South, where Greek Life is an integral part of making friends in college. My mom was so involved in her sorority that she ran the entire rush process for Auburn University her senior year. My brother, who also goes to Auburn, is part of a fraternity. So I've heard a lot about Greek Life—the good, the bad, and the weird—and knew it wasn't for me. I'm decidedly introverted, prefer hanging out in groups of five or less, and love going to sleep at 10pm. My idea of a crazy weekend includes buying Ben and Jerry's and binging Love Island all night.
But Greek Life at Dartmouth is fairly different from Greek Life at bigger state schools. Here, for instance, you can't rush until sophomore year, whereas many students at other universities rush before they even get on campus. Likewise, Dartmouth freshman have a "fraternity ban" for their first seven or so weeks of classes, which means they cannot go to fraternity or sorority parties until after Homecoming. We also have several co-ed fraternities, which are often openly LGBT-friendly, and fraternities that don't drink at all. Greek houses host several "dry" events (i.e. no alcohol) per term. And finally, major Greek Life events are open to the entirety of campus, rather than being exclusive. All of these factors make Greek Life here both more inclusive and less central to the social scene.
I've spent plenty of time at fraternities and sororities here, since they are open to campus more often than not. Gender-inclusive fraternity Alpha Theta is a favorite of mine (hey, I like their music taste!). But since neither me nor most of my friends are affiliated with a Greek house, most of my social life happens elsewhere.
Some of my friends were in Greek Life, others weren't—it never stopped us from hanging out with each other
And where else might that be? Well, we spend a lot of time at the Connecticut River, at the Cube (School Houses' center hub) for School House Tea, staging Nerf gun wars in the library or the physical sciences buildings, kayaking, hiking, working out at Alumni Gym, going to Moosilauke, seeing movies through the Hopkins Center for the Arts or at the Nugget Theater, hearing live music through Friday Night Rock or local bar Sawtooth, getting coffee (so much coffee), laying on the Green, playing wiffle ball, performing music in garages...
Ok, you get the idea. We have plenty of stuff to do.
But of course, I'm a senior, and that means I've had a lot of time to establish my friend group. How do you make friends without Greek Life? Is it harder?
A picture from a friend's birthday party
I won't lie—Greek Life does give you a leg-up in the friend-making process, but it's not as significant as you'd think. In part this is because you can't rush until your sophomore year, so campus and the freshmen specifically are not already split up into Greek houses. But also, Dartmouth students are friendly! Most of my close friends today are people I met in my freshman year by simply putting myself out there. "Do you want to grab lunch with me?" is the number one way Dartmouth students initiate a friendship. The second most popular method is probably "You'd like so-and-so, here's their phone number!" The size of the school facilitates these kind of quick connections: there are enough of us here to see new faces every day, but we're also a small enough school that you'll run into acquaintances over and over in class, clubs, or at the cafeteria.
