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05 Years Later
The theme of our 5 Year Reunion is '05 Years Later,' which refers to the transient nature of life and what a difference 5 years can make. Our beloved Dartmouth has changed: new buildings, new president, new alcohol policies. But we've changed too. The Face Times will be publishing a series of articles in anticipation of our reunion that dive into these topics. Enjoy.
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By Kyle Parkinson
Well it’s a new decade, and I spent the entirety of December reading “Best of the Decade” lists to figure out what the hell just happened. I’m not saying it was all a blur, but it did leave me standing there blinking and trying to make sense of it all. We graduated high school, watched terrorism come to America, earned college degrees, entered the real world, updated our statuses, and pinched our pennies. The whole thing seemed almost choreographed as a crash course in growing up. “They’re loading up the car to head to college; cue the bombings! They’re beginning to plan for their careers and financial futures; sink the markets!” Now here we are, taking what seems like a quick breather as we flip the calendar and realize that holy shit, our five-year reunion is a few months away.
I’ve done the math several times on my graphing calculator, and I can’t for the life of me figure out how it’s been five years. We’re still just getting started, right? We’ve still got our whole lives in front of us, right? Yet this little checkpoint comes almost as a reminder that we’re now squarely in the thick of things. We’ve had a significant, measureable amount of time in the real world (“we’ve been out longer than we’ve been in”), time to forge our paths and change our minds and relocate and reconsider. Some have reached greatness already, while others are still figuring out the formula, surely to hit upon it by the ten-year reunion (right?).
So we’ll gather on the Green and around the pong tables, some of us rusty and some of us disturbingly unrusty, but what will we all talk about? The ubiquity of Facebook and other social networks has made it nearly impossible to be in the dark about our 700 closest friends. So instead of “What have you been up to?” it might be more like “Who was that girl in that pic of you in Cabo? Is she single? Oh, she’s your fianceé … cool.” And then another Keystone becomes another Keystone until we’re all right back in that comfortable zone.
I still don’t know what exactly we do at reunions. Is there a set program or schedule? Something for which we need to plan ahead? I guess reunions used to serve as a way to really catch up with everyone you haven’t seen or heard from in the past couple years. A time to trade stories and connect on similar new interests and pursuits, but again, don’t we already know all of those things via the Internet? I’m on something like five social networks, and I get requests and updates every day from people I surely would’ve forgotten about in the non-Internet world. And so I’m kept in touch, regardless of any effort or lack thereof.
And then when I start thinking about the impending reunion, I find myself wondering if it will feel any different than coming back from an off-term. I mean, it doesn’t seem like it was that long ago, and I don’t necessarily feel out of touch at all. Sure, maybe I haven’t spoken to certain people in a while, but in general people don’t really speak to each other as much as they used to, so a long as I know the latest news, I feel like I’m moving along just fine. Not to mention, I’ve seen about 50% of the graduating class in one city or another. Showing up at the right bar in New York City can be a Dartmouth jackpot and will forever amaze me at the tiny school’s ability to shrink an enormous city.
But don’t get me wrong, the reunion does provide a unique opportunity to do it all back on the original grounds. It’ll be kind of neat sleeping in Bissell again; like a fantasy camp set in the early 2000s. And when I think about it, I actually do miss the Collis pasta (now I have to make my own pasta every night of the week). And instead of classes and studying, my only responsibility will be to avoid running into any tween-looking kids who are now somehow college graduates.
So when June comes along and I’m driving up to Hanover, here’s hoping all the nervous anxiety of being a twenty-something is replaced by a brief respite of the aforementioned fantasy camp. College, here we come.
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