
        &lt;p&gt;I&rsquo;d never known such an overwhelmingly happy group of people as my Dimensions buddies.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;That is, until I met H-Croo &mdash; a group so enthused by their temporary occupation that they took it upon themselves to change their hair color to reflect their undying excitement to meet us freshmen.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;But then I auditioned for a cappella &mdash; and was introduced to yet another stunningly exuberant array of young adults.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Upon failing to join their cheerful ranks, I joined the smilingly sarcastic group of writers on The Mirror staff, whose sharp commentary on the status quo was by no means reflected in their sunny, if sometimes snarky, personas.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Upon arriving at Dartmouth, I was taken aback by the sheer level of happiness on campus. Everybody sung pong&rsquo;s praises. There was no greater happiness than biting into that first slice of EBAs buffalo chicken pizza when it finally arrived at 3:10 a.m. Fantastic professors left students walking on cloud nine. Playing with DREAM kids made you lose weight AND look younger by association. There were rumors that last night&rsquo;s tails left the basement reeking of euphoria.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Unlike my introduction to boarding school, I saw no signs of homesickness here. When I walked down my freshman hall, I couldn&rsquo;t discern any feeble, heartbreaking whimpered calls to mom and dad that had so characterized my first nights of high school. Everybody seemed well-adjusted &mdash; doing their own laundry, decorating their dorms like palaces, avoiding the dramatic roommate problems I&rsquo;d previously encountered, even acing both the huge, anonymous intro courses and the suffocatingly small seminars.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;People here successfully ran businesses, created charities and won awards in everything they pursued. They dressed in crazy-colored clothes, studied hard but partied harder, were funny and smart and creative &mdash; and way better looking than CollegeProwler.com had forewarned. Dartmouth, it seemed, only won.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;But little by little, it began to dawn on me that maybe winning wasn&rsquo;t quite what was going on here. Things I had previously known to be irredeemable were designated winning, too. Drinking &rsquo;til you booted (or, worse, until you had to go to Dick&rsquo;s House) was glorified, violence went unchecked and &ldquo;brothers&rdquo; prided themselves on doing things so horrible to each other they couldn&rsquo;t talk about them. It became clear that Dartmouth was not quite as radiantly happy as I had originally assumed.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;But why cover it up? Why pretend it&rsquo;s all okay? Certainly it&rsquo;s not because it&rsquo;s inhuman to be upset, even over the smallest of things. And it&rsquo;s not because someone&rsquo;s telling us to be happy &mdash; there&rsquo;s nobody standing over our shoulders yelling at us to cheer up, or else.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It&rsquo;s something much simpler. Being unhappy is, by basic definition, a failure to be happy, and we&rsquo;re not the kids who fail. We are the golden children, the chosen ones, and admitting that something&rsquo;s wrong is admitting that something&rsquo;s wrong with you. We&rsquo;re not used to encountering failure, and less used to gracefully dealing with it. After Lord knows how long we&rsquo;ve spent inflating these expectations for ourselves, we find it easier to adjust and attempt to control unhappy situations than to simply admit our unhappiness.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In the end, we all end up paying for it. We don&rsquo;t progress; we never really change. Because change requires a collective, vocal dissatisfaction &mdash; an expressed unhappiness of sorts &mdash; and if we&rsquo;re constantly elated about everything, then nothing merits the effort or attention that change demands.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;When we fail to admit something&rsquo;s wrong, we lose the chance to make it better. And in the end, that&rsquo;s a greater loss than unhappiness.&lt;/p&gt;

      