Valedictory to the College
COMMENCEMENT is one of the few times in life at which an individual stands squarely on the interface of the past and the future. On one hand, the graduate can look back on his four-year experience and try to see just what has happened to himself and his peers during the college years. On the other hand, he is faced with the imminent responsibilities that come with independence and self-sufficiency. At such a time, there are few men who can help but try to measure the results of the Dartmouth experience as both a fulfillment of past expectations and a preparation for future undertakings.
Prior to entering the College, everyone was probably taken aside by an older friend or acquaintance and told the "real" truth about Dartmouth. While this may have a number of variations, the usual truth indicates that it will be a hard road academically but that chances of success are good. In addition, it will almost certainly be added that college days are the best years of your life, inferring that best should connote the most carefree and comfortable.
To some men, however, such truths were seldom apparent after matriculation. Academics ceased to be casual activities to be pursued only when less taxing diversions were unavailable. Studies assumed a new complexity and a disquieting open-endedness as many of the absolute truths of high school days were exposed as complex problems. Close friends were not found solely among the individuals with whom you could identify in a tight clique. Instead, they came from a wide spectrum of men, many with interests vastly different from your own, who challenged the basic structure of your beliefs. Social life was pretty much what might have been expected if you had realized where Hanover really is in relation to the rest of the world.
Above these purely personal observations, there were pressing problems facing the College which were of wide concern. The effects on the college experience of such programs as Great Issues, the General Reading Program, and Comprehensive Examinations were critically examined. The Administration of the College was watched closely, and our views on such things as fraternity regulations, the use of Hopkins Center, and student government were made known. The effects - both good and bad — of student activism at Dartmouth were felt. Many of us were, for a great part of our four years, struck with a feeling of discontent toward our environment. The rosy predictions made before matriculation seemed hollow: if these were the best years of our lives, the future might be very grim indeed.
„ To be sure, there were experiences through which the predictions of the best four years of life seemed to be borne out: the fellowship that comes in bulling railroad ties up the sides of what is perennially the biggest bonfire ever; the beauty of the New Hampshire countryside; the lifelong friendships begun in dormitory and fraternity bull sessions; and, literally knocking the struts from under a highly overrated Princeton football team for the Ivy title last year.
But, on the whole, the years at Dartmouth were for many of us challenging and difficult ones. We received instruction that was rigorous in detail but rarely dogmatic in its application. Freedom from the material responsibilities of the world at large provided the opportunity to size up the problems facing us and to formulate intelligently our personal views on them. Faced with presenting and defending our ideas to our peers, the ability to critically analyze a situation was fostered. The potential for self-improvement and maturation in such an environment was unlimited.
But what of the Dartmouth experience in terms of the best years of our lives, where best is defined as the most carefree and comfortable? Some did indeed have the best years of their lives in Hanover. By neglecting to work at developing themselves through the challenges offered by the College, they were able to slide by, some with academic records belying the minimal effect of the experience on them. By choosing courses of study and activities to fit their desires to exert a minimum of effort, such men were able to go through Dartmouth without any conscious introspection or change in their modes of thinking. Through this, they have lost out on the value of Dartmouth to make of themselves more than high school graduates who have taken a few college courses.
I prefer to think that a greater number of Dartmouth men have taken a different road during their four years in Hanover. Rather than enjoying the secure creature comforts, many have actively taken up the challenges offered by the College. The concerns and worries of the undergraduate years have, for many of these men, been parlayed into a love of challenge and a desire to push ahead to the solutions of the problems of the future. Rather than equating the easiest years with the best, these men have found that, the problems of the future and the efforts which must be expended in solving them, hold the promise of the most satisfying years of their lives. It is through such a definition of best that we may take with us today a store, not of ultimate answers, but of some of the ultimate questions which must be posed continually in our lives. It is in this sense that the Dartmouth experience is not terminated at Commencement, but continues as a dynamic force through the later years. We face the future hopefully, knowing that our experience here has given us, at least, the opportunity to emerge today, as the song goes, safe ... at last ... in the wide, wide world.
Valedictorian Steve Guch Jr. '67
