THE DIARY OF A FRESHMAN
FIRST WEEK
Monday: Dartmouth, in its first splendid vagueness, came into sight this morning as the White River bus rounded the last curve. Then, passing through the jumble of students and stores, we stepped out by the campus—Hanover soil at last! The simple green and white grandeur of the old Hall and its brother buildings was on our right: before us stood the wonderful new library, its tower rising above the elms; and on our left was the Administration Building whence we would push off on our College Careers.
I had read that freshmen are always bewildered, and one might very well be during the hasty hour or so of registration, matriculation, scrabbling some secondhand furniture together, hitching trunks upstairs, feeling tempted to use the fire rope to escape the innumerable solicitors, listening to the ponderable advice of sophomores, and their quaint tales of smothered freshmen, wondering, etc.
I had also read that freshmen are always lonesome. But that fascinating five-minute mixture of strangeness and familiarity between us newly met roommates and a few involuntary services to upperclassmen also moving in showed me that all freshmen are intent upon making friends and that most upperclassmen are not averse to you. (The furniture is standing up manfully and the walls have just been enlivened with pictures of Lincoln and Greta Garbo.)
Commons opened for supper. There, the obviousness of eating subdues whatever inferiority we may feel. And so it's also in the darkness of the movies. The show was a real talkie with the picture quite subordinate to the audience. Having shook the peanut shells out of my hair, had a shredded wheat and now to bed.
Wednesday: Unlike yesterday's Daily Puzzle, the Aptitude Test, placement exams, are suspiciously easy.
Tonight we walked to the Vale of Tempe, a place as lovely as its name. The dewy grass, the sweet cool shock of air among the pines, the pines themselves, each star-tipped, and, returning, a mighty outpour of moonlight upon the buildings —such composed our first excursion into the poetry of Dartmouth.
Thursday: Webster Hall was impressively thronged this morning for the opening exercises. Not even the tinted autumn leaves outside could match the colors within. Professors in black robes trimmed with scarlet and yellow and blue sat before us—the white-clad Palaeopitus ushers moved among the green-coated seniorsand, as we arose for President Hopkins' entrance, the bright sunlight enriching clothes and faces made the whole room flash with very youth. More than 2,000 voices lifted the hymns. More than four thousand hands applauded the opening address, which, I learned afterwards, was the first ever to have been thus accorded, a measure of its impression upon us.
In the rush this rainy afternoon the sophomores, with four-to-one odds against them, surprised the freshmen by speedily capturing two of the five footballs. But their numbers could not avail for we won the rest.
Seized by Delta Alpha tonight with fifty other freshmen, I was made to march around the town hollering, "Nerts!", and was paddled to bed very late.
Saturday: The monotony of the Dartmouth touchdowns in the classic collision with Norwich was relieved by the parade of the Norwich cadets and the undressed-up freshmen. Our dormitory having laboriously hauled a Ballyhoo-backhouse around the track, we were a bit disgusted when not ours but the cleanest float won the prize.
Sunday: Two days of steady argument with my roommate culminated today in a decision to change my room. I wanted to live with anybody but him—perhaps a big jolly jig with a smile like a split tomato (he would just match the curtains)someone not intelligent enough to be annoying. Followed a talk with the Dean and interviews with three unmated freshmen whom I thought best to leave so. Returned home this evening, there was silence for a while. Then my roommate turned to me and said, "What do you say we forget about these last two days?" Cider and tobacco and high talk before the fireplace now.
SECOND WEEK
Monday: Classes today.—Having felt rather neutral the past week, we were pleasantly surprised to be introduced into the curriculum thus by one of the professors: "Well, boys, this is a hard course. But take it easy. Informality will be stressedsmoking is allowed in conferences. Friendship as well as knowledge is fostered here." (Incidentally, this is the first year that freshmen have been allowed to smoke on the streets.) Every professor, in addition to his knowledge, seems to have something individual so that the extensive conference system is especially welcome to us.
Tuesday: The dormitories have such a peculiarly club-like atmosphere that it is very easy to make acquaintances. Across the hall lives one who has been a winetaster in France and can talk of Yquem, Pomard, and Falais; there is a pennypitching game always going on upstairs; a sailor rooms below; a connoisseur of phonograph records plays foreign recordings nearby; a student next door knows Chinese and can prattle in an alarming manner; and there is a collector of first editions, a cinemaniac, a poet and an artist around.
Thursday: Life can never settle into a routine here. Every day something turns up: evening lectures, the D. C. A. and the D. O. C. freshman feeds, details about a girl in White River, art exhibits in Carpenter and the Tower Room of the Library, in some classes whole books to be read in a week, dormitory football games, fraternity initiations for sophomores such as measuring Main Street with a fish or the distance to Lyme in ski-lengths, etc.
Saturday: With a couple of friends, also members of the Outing Club, I hiked around the hills today, catching glimpses below us of the white and red college among the turning leaves and, once, hearing a faint echo of "Eleazer Wheelock" chanted by the football crowd at the Vermont game. The air was like the inside of a snow-apple, very cold at night when we later slept on Mt. Mooselauke. No meat tastes better than that cooked over an open fire and flavored with dirty hands.
