A Return to Dartmouth
I was trying to explain, in a secondary school English classroom, why Keats combines joy and pain as he does in the first stanza of the "Ode to a Nightingale." "Haven't you felt," I asked, wondering as I often do in my efforts to bring art to life whether they have lived long enough to know what I'm talking about, "Haven't you felt so happy about something, so ecstatic, so struck dumb by relief or gratitude or beauty that it stops you, freezes you, and somehow hurts?" Blank faces _ maybe because they had felt no such thing, maybe because important things have to be concealed _ it isn't cool to talk about important things. All right. branched off. The sun was out, in early April thin warmth; the Merrimack glistened on the other side of the road; cars rushed by; I felt strong, sure. I smiled, harder and harder, looking, no doubt, foolish, but glad to look foolish. Tears came into the smile; I had that surge of joy which makes you want to leap, shout, embrace someone, yet could only keep walking, knowing that I had never felt happy in this way before. My blood seemed to race around my body; my hands trembled; the suitcase was weightless. I felt so wonderful it hurt. Know what I mean?" Slow nods. They know; they're remembering something, something private.
"O.K. Here's an example. I dropped out of Dartmouth in April of my junior year. I was wasting my time and the College's, and my father's, and the federal government's money. I was not working at my courses, not even attending classes regularly, and despite regular guilt sessions and resolutions had not managed to change the pattern. The decision to quit was sudden _instantaneous, really _ and, once made, so absolutely, unquestionably right that that night, and more and more the next day as I hitchhiked home to Exeter, New Hampshire, I felt a joy welling up inside me, a new kind of joy, born, I now know, of starting at that time, with that first real decision of my life, to become a man. In Concord, I walked for a mile or so along the interstate to where the Exeter exit They know why Keats says his heart aches through being too happy.
The period over, I sat at my desk for a moment. It was the third period in a row, Monday morning, and every period had required the emotional intensity, the concentration, the pulling together without appearing to do so of 14 or so students into one mind, and of that mind into conjunction with a great piece of writing. I was spent. Finally I stood, and walked down the stairs to my mailbox. The first letter I saw was from Dartmouth. Curious _ I have not maintained alumni relations with the College _ I opened it. It was the student loan form I had signed in September of 1963, stamped, finally, "Paid." There was my signature _ it was the original sheet of paper. In a box at the bottom right-hand corner was typed "Withdrew April 1966," then, written in pen, "To return to Dartmouth."
I did not return. I spent two years in the Peace Corps in West Africa (Senegal), and held a grudge against Dartmouth. Like any adolescent, I blamed exteriors for my inner turmoil; it was the College, I claimed, that had stifled my natural curiosity and motivation. It was parochial; it was narrow; it valued only jocks and pre-meds; there was no room for my creative spirit. Yet I had started to become a man in that decision to stop being a drone, and even as I planned to finish college elsewhere, at a co-educational, large, urban university, I knew that good memories of Hanover dominated, that my immaturity as a student had left me helpless to use what was there so richly offered to me.
At about the same time that my memory of leaving Dartmouth, summoned up and dusted off to try to get at Keats, coincided so eerily with the return of my student loan form, a Yankee Magazine article about New England college autumn rituals included several pictures of the traditional bonfire on the Green. Again, I started to remember. Freshman beanies, working for upperclassmen (and sneakily striking back when privilege was abused); building that bonfire, with the energy and silliness and masculine posturing and class spirit and new friendships that, it seems, only such objectively trivial rites generate; the tug-of-war with the sophomores. (We lost.) These were good things. The College made me, and most of us, feel part, instantly, of something large, something great, something living and healthy and fun and serious and important. We learned parts of the College's history; we learned its songs (I still know most of them _ "Dartmouth's in town again, team, team, team!"), its cheers, its spoken and unspoken ways, and we became part of Dartmouth and proud of it. How proudly I wore that new green jacket!
Looking at Yankee Magazine, it was clear to me, as it had been for some time, that any negative feelings I had retained for Dartmouth had long since dissipated. Not to be replaced by adulation; Dartmouth has not come to seem to me perfect. But it is a good and great place, and though I was not prepared for the intellectual gifts it offered, it gave me friendship and a sense that I belonged to something fine which helped me in my loneliness, in security, impatience with myself _ in all my last indulgence and confusions of childhood.
In part, I'm happy to say, I rehabilitated Dartmouth for myself through my own action, though time, as usual, did most of the work. I had not, technically, failed at Dartmouth, yet technicalities aren't truths, and in fact I had failed, failed to do what I should have, to be what I might have, to be, even, what I wanted to be. Having become a runner after a fat and lazy youth, I first stretched out to twenty-six miles, three hundred and eighty-five yards in the Dartmouth Medical School marathon of 1977. Crossing the bridge toward the finish line near the boathouse, I looked on up the hill and saw in my mind the Green, Baker tower, the Hop, the bonfire, even the old pine (fatigue plays wondrous tricks on the mind!). As I crossed the finish line and bent over, gasping and very, very proud, I felt a new peace with Dartmouth, and shed a tear or two of memory, of gratitude, of reconciliation.
I dropped out of Dartmouth in April ofmy junior year.
"Withdrew April1966," then,written in pen,"To return toDartmouth."
I saw in my mindthe Green, Bakertower, the Hop,the bonfire, eventhe old pine.
