The buzzing sense of anticipation in the air must mean that Fall Term 2024 has officially arrived! Cars full of students, twin XL bedsheets, and mini fridges deluge our dorm parking lots, and our campus transforms into a vibrant and diverse tapestry of people, talents, interests, and experiences. It’s like showing up to a garden at the peak of a harvest (coincidentally, it is peak harvest season!). All around you are opportunities ripe for the picking.
As an integral and deserved member of this community, you are offered an abundance of opportunity. “You can leverage the tremendous resources of this institution to start creating the life you want to be living right now.” And the abundance of choices and commitments might leave you feeling overwhelmed as you pile on the classes, social commitments, and extracurriculars that sound most exciting. Our Fall theme of Connecting to Our Purpose can help you realize your core values and develop a systematic approach for determining which opportunities at Dartmouth serve you on your path towards meaning and fulfillment.
Before we jump in, we first invite you to consider how you might leverage the tools and resources here to deepen your connection to your life’s purpose:
1. Discover and embrace your core values. Recognizing what your values are early on can provide you with the assurance that the goals and opportunities you pursue in your time as student are anchored in your larger vision. Professional staff and campus resources can help you unearth what matters most, and help you design a criterion that makes a thousand decisions and opportunities dissolve into just a few priorities. Check out this sampling of Dartmouth services that can help you narrow in on your core vision:
- Student Wellness Center – Set up 1:1 time with a trained, non-judgmental listener to deepen your self-awareness and embrace your path towards flourishing.
- Counseling Center – Meet with a licensed mental health provider in a confidential setting to help you understand your emotions as you explore your identity and other challenges.
- Tucker Center – Seek confidential spiritual guidance through Pastoral Counseling with a College Chaplain.
- Center for Professional Development – Schedule a coaching appointment to discover self-assessment tools that help you identify your interests and strengths, and which career pathways they most align with.
Reflect: What brings my life a sense of fulfillment and meaning?
2. Maximize opportunities that connect you to a future life vision rooted in your core values. Once you have unearthed what you instinctively most value, your role as a student is to explore and grow the avenues that connect you with your purpose. So many departments and groups are poised to help in this regard. Here are some, just to name a few:
- Center for Social Impact
- Dartmouth Sustainability
- Academic Skills Center
- Office of Pluralism and Leadership
- Outdoor Programs
- Hopkins Center for the Arts
- Dartmouth Athletics
- Student Groups
Reflect: Which Dartmouth experiences and opportunities can connect me to what gives my life meaning?
3. Sign up for our newsletter to stay in the loop about additional, actionable steps for connecting with your and deepening your connection with your purpose. We will provide tools, resources, student experiences and more to help you recognize your strengths and potential, weed out that which does not serve you, cultivate that which does, and enjoy the fruits of your labor.
Happy harvesting this fall!
Your friends at the SWC