Latter-day Saints and Legislative Interns: An Off-Term Reflection

A few Saturdays ago, as Capitol Hill interns do, I had lunch with a new friend. By new friend, I mean someone I had spoken to for five minutes at a reception during the week. Nevertheless, I had a connection to this young fellow. He might have been from Utah, I from Maryland, but we were both members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

As we spoke, the topic of church came up. “Church culture in Utah is so wack, man,” he remarked, “When you’re here, you kind of want to go to church because you feel so different from everyone else.” (Take his word for it: in politics’ open-bar culture, teetotaling Latter-day Saints are an endangered species.) He finished: “In Utah, people don’t care about the Church as much since everyone’s a member.” 

What had begun as an attempted networking ‘coffee’ with another intern had evolved into an investigation of our religion’s cultural and geographic oddities… 

Dartmouth has taught me many things, foremost of which is that alien environments amplify the familiar. At this point, I am aware that this article is starting to sound like I’ve ripped it from The Dartmouth’s “Mirror” section, so please bear with me. When surrounded by people who are different, one’s pre-existing identity—which one may have taken for granted—matters so much more. This is not a philosophical argument, but a statement borne out by my observations of others.

Some have found in this phenomenon an explanation for American quirks. Facing down the primeval gaze of the frontier, residing at an extreme, colonists held on that much tighter to the promises enshrined in the British common law (guns and all) and to the Protestant ideal. 

I have found in this phenomenon part of the genius of the off-term concept. While we often harangue the D-Plan for its inconveniences (not seeing a friend for a year due to a poorly timed LSA+, for instance), the off-term takes one away from home but may also pull one back home. Being away from Hanover exaggerates some features of life while minimizing others.

Those who stay on the wagon while on campus might be compelled, by loneliness or the promise of endless-margarita happy hours, to go full throttle after their internship ends each day. Social butterflies might retreat into their studio cocoons when burdened by 14-hour days at Goldman. Those who took six terms in a row, when suddenly liberated from the burdens of class and extracurriculars, might finally have a chance for self-discovery.

In such a way, I might best describe the off-term as a “probationary state”—taking off during junior year might present the last opportunity to venture temporarily outside of the Dartmouth Bubble before leaving Hanover for good. An off-term is not only a time to garnish one’s resume with another summer of “analysis” at *insert number* *insert Greek letter* Capital Management but also the time for one to learn. Learning, by necessity, requires one to err, to stumble, to make a fool of oneself, and the like.

As a Latter-day Saint, I would even compare the entirety of human experience to an extended off-term. We in the Church believe that Adam and Eve fell so that they and their posterity might live mortal lives, thereby experiencing both the supernal highs and lows of mere manhood (2 Nephi 2:23). Separated from God, we Latter-day Saints hold, man understands and appreciates the gift of God’s love infinitely more and only because of that separation (2 Nephi 2:22). To us, absence clarifies: it helps us understand what is so important about a thing if it is missing.

Absence from home—be it the presence of God, one’s family seat, or the pines of Hanover—forces one to confront and contemplate the wheat and the chaff of one’s priorities. “It must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things,” says The Book of Mormon (2 Nephi 2:11). This principle holds for the D-Plan: dragging not-quite-kids, not-quite-adults back and forth, in and out of hometowns, the ‘real world,’ and a collegiate bubble. It is easy to curse these rowdy tides, but it is within their crests and troughs that I believe a spiritual experience is found.

My religion teaches that man cannot know good without having sinned, joy without having sobbed, and peace without having been restless. Man would not have been ready for eternity without a sabbatical in mortality. So it is at Dartmouth. Nearing my senior year, a few months into two off-terms in a row, I wonder if I would have come to appreciate home so much without the Hanoverian prison, or, for that matter, Hanover so much without an extended stay in the Swamp. The more I ponder it, the more I doubt.