A Dartmouth program lets tourists be students as they pass through the pretty campus
The transformation from tourist to student begins at the historic 245-year-old
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The valet at the historic inn (which underwent a stunning $43 million renovation in 2011) parked our car when we arrived and told us we wouldn't need it. He was right. Most of the classes and activities are a block or two away, across the historic Dartmouth Green, the center of the college's academic and social life.
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Students relax from coursework with a game of volleyball on the Dartmouth Green.
Trustees of Dartmouth College
We set off to find our first seminar amongst the college buildings that ring the Green, many of which feature the beautiful style of Georgian architecture.
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We found it in an auditorium with the tiered seating of an ancient Grecian theater. Eager to absorb new pearls of wisdom in an academic setting, we took our seats in one of the rows, surrounded by young undergraduates and grad students, all with notebooks and laptops at the ready. Our old minds were open and ready, too, as we waited for the lecture to begin. It began moments later when the professor, Min Wu, a PhD from Yale School of Medicine, wrote the title of her subject on the giant whiteboard: '
The lecture on 'Coordinate Cortical Dynamics and Signaling' was fascinating to the students but — like all the other sessions attended — was way over the writer's head.
TIM LELAND
This was English, granted, but an English that left our active, open old minds gasping for breath. What was that all about? We had no idea, but the fresh-faced young students around us apparently found the lecture fascinating because they spent the next hour furiously writing down everything Dr. Wu was saying in their notebooks and laptops.
It was an eye-opening start to the series of classes we attended, each of which led to the same conclusion: today's college students, at least at Dartmouth, are much smarter than we are, and they're taking courses way beyond our ken. Most of the classes seemed to have little to do with the curriculums we encountered at our respective colleges 60 years ago.
The Dartmouth College logo is seen on the Dartmouth College campus.
Scott Eisen/Getty
We were optimistic when we saw the title of our final class: 'How Media Count.' As retired journalists, we thought we would be right at home in the six-hour seminar given by four visiting professors from the University of Toronto. It turned out that by 'media' the Digital Humanities and Social Engagement cluster at Dartmouth meant fabric, prints, sculpture, and music, just about anything except print newspapers, our idea of 'media.' Presented in a Chaucer-esque Middle English, the seminar linked media with concepts of time, abstraction and reality, rendering us unable — not daring — to ask a question with intelligence.
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Needless to say, the students around us asked lots of questions that showed they knew what the speakers were talking about.
The courses may have been over our heads, but there was one 'reality' that we couldn't miss: Today's college students are courteous and eager to help obviously lost older tourists in their midst. As we wandered around the campus looking forlornly for the location of our next class, students were forever approaching us to ask where we were trying to go and telling us the best way to get there.
Our brief experiment in contemporary student life was an education in itself. Thankfully, we didn't have to take any exams when it was over. In the end, our Ivy League Field Trip reinforced our faith in the calibre and kindness of today's young people. That may have been the most important learning experience of all.
Julie Hatfield and her husband are former members of the Globe editorial staff. She can be reached at julhatfield@comcast.net.
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