DIARY OF A FRESHMAN
THIRD WEEK OF COLLEGE
As we settle into the third week of college, things come more easily. We are beginning to gather some ideas of how important it is to get a strong start in studies, so that those phantom-like hour exams, which lie but a month before us, will not bring total emptiness. The varsity football team is preparing to meet Lafayette on Saturday. Those of us playing freshman football are beginning to understand the college type of game. The efficiency of the coaches and the keen interest of everyone concerned has made football at college a better game than at school. Competition has spurred us on to added efforts to make the team. Our victory over Clark School has been but a tryout and changes in the line-up surely will be made. Lafayette has been defeated and our freshman "B" team has eked out a tie with Tilton. All goes well on the gridiron!
FOURTH WEEK
Sunday offers a belated chance to spend a few hours in the Tower Room. Even the cleverest author is handicapped when his reader is reclining in a Tower Room chair. Sleep!—why did they put such comfortable chairs up here? The wonderful collection of books in the Tower Room, in fact in the whole Library, is certainly impressive. Another week of classes and still more rain. While the varsity is at Penn we have subdued Roxbury School and at least upheld the freshman undefeated football reputation thus far. Saturday night at the Nugget brings temporary relief to aching limbs. One more week till Harvard!
FIFTH WEEK
The Commons' orchestra has begun to take effect. How much better a meal tastes where there is a tune to keep time with on a glass! Upperclassmen are around selling tickets to the ball at Harvard. Now, if only I hadn't gone out for football! A bewildering French novel is at last explaining itself when the nightly cry rings out: "Ice cream, candy, sandwiches, cigarettes!"— The lunch cart again and half an hour off. If only college were all like this! "Holy Moses, an 8 o'clock and I'm not prepared." "Tough old boy, tough. Personally I'm sleeping late."—Friday night and what a dead town Hanover is when the Harvard peerade is on. Think of the boys in Boston. Tomorrow we play New Hampshire freshman and we've got to win. At last the game begins—what a brute of a tackle! Oh well, we won anyhow and next week it's Boston!
SIXTH WEEK
What a game that must have been! Harvard sure is lucky, but next week Yale gets a beating. Today is Tuesday and I get a crack at the voting machine. Dear old Hoover, and did he carry this college! "How'd you hit the Math, Ted? These hour exams are some things. Let's eat!"Tonight is the rally on campus for the team. Beat Yale! An Indian yell for the team! Eleazar! What a bonfire! The freshmen mass after the rally. "What's up? The Nugget? O. K. Let's go!"— Today is our big day, as the freshman football squad goes to Boston. Travelling with a college team does create a feeling of importance. They sure do things up brown at Dartmouth. Real service—and we're only freshmen. "How'd you like to travel with the varsity?"—A cloud of disappointment hovers over us later when we realize that we are the first team to lose to Harvard since "Pat" Holbrook has coached, but we'll fix Dean! "How did it happen Yale won?" Maybe this just wasn't Dartmouth's day.
SEVENTH WEEK
Hour exams are beginning to fill the air as we look forward to the end of the freshman football season with Dean on Saturday. Election is approaching and the Dartmouth brings us, each day, various ideas on the political situation. "Half a buck on Hoover!" "O. K. it's on." "What's a Dartmouth Night?", is a question freshmen are wondering about. The torchlight parade to Prexy's and his speech are impressive and a lot of fun. Upperclassmen seem overjoyed as Fall House Parties drawnear and the majority of freshmen wish now that they hadn't lost a year of schooling somewhere. Today we head for Boston and the Dean game. The completeness of a college football trip again looms up. The Dean game, with our defeat to end the season looks black. Saturday night we broke training in Boston and as we came back to Hanover on Sunday all seemed dull and it was a long ride back to these hills. Some of the boys came in tonight and we have thoroughly hashed over the freshman season. Next year we will take our beating proper on the squad.
EIGHTH WEEK
The election, which has occupied the nation for so long, has also held much interest here at Dartmouth. Some of us are satisfied, others terrified, and still others disgusted. Faint suggestions of winter, appearing at early hours of the morning, bring to mind that we will soon have Dartmouth weather, as many outsiders think of Dartmouth. Armistice Day has brought us a special service in Chapel. The varsity battles Cornell at Ithaca, and that muchused grid-graph will be our gridiron. It appears today in the Dartmouth that Dean Bill has reported our class to be the best yet admitted under the renowned Selective Process of Admission. A feeling of superiority is soon supplanted by the realization that our merit is yet to be proved. Perhaps those over-emphasized school records were mistaken and too much should not be expected. Time will tell!
NINTH WEEK
Thanksgiving recess looms pleasantly before us and many freshmen will go home for the first time as "college men." Perhaps we have changed our manner, and at least we hope to have derived some noticeable benefits from our first term at college. The award of numerals to members of the freshman football team has brought smiles to twenty-nine faces. It sure was worth the work and our one regret is in being the first defeated freshman team in three seasons. As I conclude, the all-freshman English exam has just been completed. Doubt rests in many a first-year mind, as all low grades are turned in to the Dean's office. Well, we can't all get A's.
