Going twelve months without intercourse is not all that unlikely. It is also far worse than one might imagine.

If you live in a country whose buildings have no central heating, you will be miserable all winter even though it never gets close to freezing.

There’s no reason not to look as good as you can; you’re not conforming or whatever.

It’s pretty awesome to begin earning money.

My erratic sleep pattern in college was actually interfering with my ability to record long-term memories.

Just about every romantic relationship has a painfully imbalanced power dynamic.

I will probably never move into or out of an apartment with ease.

To date an Iranian woman is to learn that one’s lifestyle is unclean in ways one never thought possible.

Kindness is misplaced when it’s out of some vague fear.

I have to continually educate myself, or I begin to fall behind the people I admire.

Love is a combination of many feelings—some false, some genuine—and it’s often hard to know which feeling one is acting from.

Intelligence often manifests as a particular kind of quietness that is both very attractive and slightly spooky. (Obama is a good example.)

Living in India is a great opportunity to hear young, liberal Americans bitch about their maids.

In the past, part of my moral system was based on a mistaken attempt to solidify a fluid world.

It’s questionable what having a completely original thought would even feel like.

To lose someone’s love is one of the most shocking things.

There are apparently no repercussions for not filing your taxes.

Americans take for granted that they will almost never have diarrhea or be electrocuted, but in some places those things happen many times per month.

I want a wife and children so much.

How to look like a forty-year-old at age sixty: practice Buddhism; never have kids.

It was stupid to have a thing against tattoos.

It’s possible for your first-ever drag on a cigarette to be addictive.

Up until their first broken heart, many young people are brittle—almost as if they’re bracing for it.

Whatever my reasons were for thinking I didn’t like parties, it isn’t true.

Some painful things never get to where I feel like laughing about them.

Moving to a new place each year guarantees that life will never get all that good.

Dartmouth students are absolutely amazing, but more so once they’ve graduated.

Fred Meyer '08 majored in Government. He spent the year after graduation at a Buddhist retreat center in Vermont, and is now living and working in New Delhi at a startup company founded by two Dartmouth students. Fred's reflections are the first installment of "Oh, The Places You'll Go," a regular feature in which alumni and students engaged in interesting activities off-campus will offer up wit and wisdom gained from their experiences.