Before I Sleep
As I write this essay, I have 195 days until I graduate. And in that time I hope to: learn pottery (next week's project); ski Killington (winter break?); go to English tea at Sanborn House (definitely won't happen); use the weight room (maybe next term...); do something really crazy, like streak naked through Baker Library's Reserve Corridor (certainly won't do that!); and write a children's book (hoping to start that over break). Time is running out.
I need to figure out what I want to do with my life the rest of my life and to prepare for it. And, in the meantime, to graduate.
But it is hard to figure out what to do with your life, and to pick up the loose ends of the Dartmouth experience, when your days are filled with the sorts of things I've filled them with during the last four years.
Take a typical day from the fall when I'm writing this. I wake up at about 6:30 to do some last-minute reading before classes. By 8:45 I'm sittingin Provost Lee Bollinger's First Amendment law class, wishing I had gone to bed even a little bit before 2 a.m. Before my next class begins at 11, I have an hour to write cover letters and comb the Career Services files of prospective employers. Then I make phone calls to bus companies, DJs and banquet-hall facilities for my sorority's formal dance.
My Contemporary Issues in American Education class begins at 11:15, and after that a quick bite (to go). Next, I head to the offices of The Dartmouth, where I am assistant managing editor. From 1 to 7 p.m. I make story assignments, edit, and answer reporters' questions.
For dinner I meet one of the teaching assistants for my Education 20 class. At 7 I'm off to government professor Thomas Nichols's house to watch an HBO movie on civil-military relations At 8:3 01 head to my sorority house, Delta Gamma. I preside over a session of the house honor board (I am vice president social standards). House meetings continue until 11:30 or so. Finally I sit down in front of my computer screen, back in my own room, to work on a 32-page paper ("The Moral Halo Surrounding the Soviet Military") for my senior government seminar.
Another day has gone by, and the cover letters for corporate recruiting still need to be written. I've missed another Sanborn House tea at 4 p.m. My skis still haven't made it to Killington. One hundred ninety-four days left to do everything at Dartmouth that I've always wanted to do. Is real life like this?
