Diary of a Freshman
We left oft' last month just as hour exams were in full swing. Without doubt they took their toll as usual and yet they proved encouraging to some of us. In the election of class officers we managed to make up our minds after having tasted a bit of real campaigning coupled with all its folly—but then what else can be done under the circumstances? The anxious waiting for vacation finally ended as we trekked homeward on the last day of March. Theoretically the second vacation since we have been here, and it helped a great deal to relieve that heavy feeling of monotony which seems to be synonymous with the early spring in Hanover. Returning to college with an eye for spring after the sloppy season, we were greeted by almost two feet of snow on the first night back here. That sort of thing, it would seem, just must happen and it brought many a cuss-word; but at present the snow is fast sinking into the ground.
Spring football practice is knocking at the door, but we need solid ground for that and so must wait awhile longer. Meanwhile the varsity ball team has opened the season with an 8-2 win over Wesleyan. With but two outdoor sessions the team has started off right and today they open their official league season against Yale and Mr. Broaca. Most anything is liable to happen to the league this year—Harvard has joined, but otherwise it's still the same old league. Well hope for a winner and look for the best. The freshman baseballers are still at work in the confines of the gym cage. What the prospects are, we can't say. Lacrosse has taken its first set-back because of the snow and the game to open the year has been postponed. Good old snow!—and what a whale of a difference just a few feet make!
With the coming of senior canes to the streets about town we suspect that it may be soon that our freshman hats will pass out—that is, what is left of them. We are finally starting down the home stretch of our first year. In many cases the spring will mean hard work to overcome short callings of bygone weeks and months. It will round out our life at Dartmouth. We will have seen a bit of everything during a full college year, and yet again it may bring "fever" and trouble for our marks. That, at least, is something to keep in mind and guard against. At any rate, we are reminded of the nearness of the end as we are called upon to pick our sophomore courses. We have had about seven months of college. It is hard to say just what it has done for us, hard even to say what we have learned, but surely we have absorbed something and all the more successfully if it does not mark us with newness, but rather has become a part of us, a gradual absorption of a broader intellectual and social life.
