I leaned against the senior fence, vacuum cleaner in hand, and watched Dan make his way back to Norwich. Now I was stuck in Hanover for the entire summer for no good reason. Without any job prospects and just a sad pile of flimsy rejection letters from potential grad schools, I’d extended my lease on my apartment past senior year. My thought was that a few more months with my new boyfriend could lead to something more serious. Marriage? Kids? I was desperate enough for a post-graduation plan that I was delusional with hope for something that was never a real possibility. I looked down at the dusty upright I’d lent Dan before things went sour between us and tried to draw some comfort from at least knowing how I’d be spending that Friday night.

It was really Dartmouth that I didn’t want to end things with. As a transfer student, I’d been on campus only for my junior and senior years, and now that my stint was over I was filled with regret at how I’d squandered my time. It moved me, being at Dartmouth. Somewhere on the sense-of-awe spectrum between seeing the Mona Lisa for the first time and finding a pair of designer jeans on sale and in my size. I got a giddy thrill every time I contributed to class discussions or nailed a paper. My heart skipped whenever I heard those Baker bells chime or I touched Warner Bentley’s nose for luck at the Hop. Such history! Such prestige! The academics were a challenge, but that pursuit of an A (or a B in many cases) made me feel like a small but valued cog in this very grand machine.

I skated by on D’s in high school, took a series of menial jobs for a few years afterward and needed to make up for all my mistakes by slogging through a heap of payback at a community college. So every single day at Dartmouth felt like a honeymoon at the end of a very long, bitter relationship. School and I, we weren’t supposed to end up this way. I was destined for the management track of a fast-food restaurant, not an Ivy League college. “There’s no way I’m supposed to be here,” I’d tell my mother. “Some administrator in an awkward-length skirt and sensible shoes is going to come knocking on my door any day now and tell me that a terrible mistake has been made.”

My first two terms were the most work and the most fun. I took the sports editor position at The D, and my already impossible workload became even more difficult. The grind of a daily paper—even a small campus daily—was exhausting. CliffsNotes became my primary texts, and I’m certain I clocked more hours of sleep during poor Peter Saccio’s incredible lectures than I did in my bed—but I still get nostalgic for that giddy, overtired camaraderie my fellow D staffers and I shared. I made incredible friends, too, becoming tight with a trio of mature but self-effacing ’95s who were quick-witted and passionate, confident and cool. How had I never met girls like these before? They brought me into their fold and we were soon inseparable. Until they graduated. It killed me to watch them get their diplomas when I still had a year to go.

Stuck on campus with no more than a few casual acquaintances, what I should have done was join a club, maybe one of the sororities I thought myself better than, or even The D again, but instead I became a virtual loner, convinced there were no other Yvonne, Kristen or Susan types on campus. I ate alone, shopped alone, studied alone. I even moved out of my dorm at Ripley and into a solo apartment over Murphy’s. While I was thrilled at no longer having to deal with dorm life (which included such annoyances as a tap-dancing upstairs neighbor who routinely woke me at 6 a.m. with his morning practice), it didn’t do much for my social life to distance myself even more from campus life.

I became even more of an outsider by applying for, and somehow getting, a senior fellowship in creative writing. With a serious cut in class requirements, the result was even less interaction with my peers. I locked myself in my apartment or my windowed study on the top floor of Baker and poured myself into my book each day. If I needed a break, I’d visit with my mentors in the English department or take advantage of my very patient astronomy prof’s office hours to have him explain one more time how a supernova forms. (Science was the one painful hole in my credits I needed to fill.)

The nights were harder. Three years older than most of my classmates, I always felt like the odd girl out, drifting from one clique to another, never quite clicking with any. As for guys? Forget it. Dating a Dartmouth boy was a dream I never even pursued. It was partly my age, but also intimidation. In the past, thanks to a dangerously high level of self-loathing, I’d settled for a heap of losers ranging from a drug-addled skinhead to a married 52-year-old. Intelligent young men who had neither a wife nor a probation officer? Waaay out of my league. So, instead, I latched on to the locals.

First there was Ken from the Dirt Cowboy who, in lieu of being able to take me out on a barista’s wages, brought foamy cappuccinos up to my place, where we held hands and watched the latest rental from Videostop. Across the street was the waiter from the Hanover Inn who literally said to me the day after a drunken hookup, “I’m just not that into you.” (His tips got significantly smaller after that.) At the photo shop was Paul, but it turned out I just wasn’t into him. Then there was the waiter from Murphy’s who often knocked on my door after his shifts. Cute and fun, but he was clearly just using me for my convenient location, preferring to climb a flight of stairs than trek home to Sunapee, New Hampshire, at 2 in the morning.

Dan was different. He was in his early 30s and an aspiring, extraordinarily gifted writer with a storied past that included jail time and alcohol addiction. With a few foibles of my own I wasn’t proud of, I could relate to him more than the prep-school types. He and I were both former screw-ups just trying to fit in. He’d walk over the bridge from his rented studio in Norwich and meet me at the library. I’d watch for him from my perch in Baker as he crossed the Green. Baseball cap on, book bag laden with novels and note pads, he easily blended in with the sweatshirts shuffling to and from class. I knew that feeling of masquerading. Even though I was enrolled and he wasn’t, I felt only a little more entitled to be at Dartmouth. As we read classics and played footsies in a couple of cozy chairs at Sanborn, I carved out plans for us to move to Iowa or someplace equally bleak but writerly.

I started to suspect that Mr. Too-Good-To-Be-True (at least from my low standards) was in fact that when he said he was about to be published and the book advance was $250,000. “Really? That sounds like an awful lot for a first-time author,” I said. Meanwhile, I was the one picking up every restaurant check on our frequent dates. After questioning a few more of his stories that didn’t seem to add up, I called the literary agency he claimed to be a client of (“The same as Salman Rushdie’s!” he told me excitedly when we first met) and confirmed that, in fact, they’d never heard of him. Neither had the college he told me he graduated from. Who knows if he’d even been to prison, but I wasn’t about to call the Rikers Island switchboard to find out. I saw Dan on campus once after we broke up, penning another of his tales in a notebook at Collis. I gave him a dismissive sneer—snotty girl warning him to stay off her turf—as I sashayed past. By then, it was no longer my turf either.

The rest of that summer following graduation was a lonely one. Being at Dartmouth is not the same as being in Dartmouth, I quickly realized. Unable to let go, I aimlessly trolled Main Street and became a regular at Murphy’s, prompting my bartender buddy Tails to ask me in the shaded, dank cool one July afternoon, “Didn’t you graduate? What the hell are you still doing here?” After one last attempt to stay by pursuing a job in the admissions office, and being promptly, and wisely, turned down for it, I finally boxed up my belongings a few weeks before fall term started. It was time to move on.

Despite my ups and downs there, I still miss Dartmouth. Desperately. Especially in the fall, when that back-to-school chill is in the air. I close my eyes and breathe in that woodsy smell of fallen leaves and I’m back once again, walking from Ripley to wherever, backpack slung across one shoulder and my future a distant worry. Perhaps I’ll sign up for a Rassias course one summer—I can squeeze my two missing Dartmouth years into 10 days of intensive Italian! There’s also my dream that one of my kids will get a thick envelope with that “Vox Clamantis In Deserto” seal in the upper-left corner sometime in the 2020s, and I can recapture my college days by mooching off theirs. I’ve also brought up the idea of retiring to the Upper Valley area to my husband, a Penn alum, but he’ll likely just “uh-huh, honey” me on that subject until we’re 64 1/2, by which point I’m sure he’s hoping I’ll be over my obsession.

I visit often, which helps. Because even though the campus does change, Dartmouth really doesn’t. I don’t, however, do reunions. Never been to one. Probably never will. Sure, there’s the awkward fact that I’d only look vaguely familiar to maybe two other people attending; most would just think, “Wrong tent, lady.” But even though I could turn on my socially savvy side now and likely walk away with a few more friends than I did 15 years ago, I prefer visiting Dartmouth in the same solitary kind of way I attended. The quiet weekends or, even better, the weeks between terms when even most current students aren’t there, that’s my favorite time to go. I walk the dimmed halls, poke my head into the empty classrooms, grab a seat in my favorite nook at Sanborn and just take simple pride in being there as an alum. Whether I really belonged back then or not, who knows? I do now.

Jennifer Wulff’s next stop was New York City, where she wrote for People for 11 years. She’s now a freelancer and mom in Norwalk, Connecticut.