If I Could Do It Over

"If your undergraduate days were given back to you, how would you spend them differently?"

WE RECENTLY posed this question to a few of Dartmouth's many successful alumni (according to the editors' arbitrary notions of "successful"). Most replied forthrightly, but several got a dreamy tone in their voice and didn't have much to say at all. For these pages we stuck mostly to the replies of the former.

Which leads us to a request for President Freedman. To save future alumni from having regrets, we ask a small concession that would allow students to go to films, practice, clubs, parties, exhibitions, lectures, plays, concerts, games, and cabins; on hikes, paddles, workouts, runs, walks, and skiing expeditions; to participate in all this, and more, and still have time to take more courses than a body has a right to.

President Freedman, whatever else you do at Dartmouth, we ask only that you lengthen the day.

Theodore Geisel '25

Author, filmmaker, publisher,

I know what they're trying to do—they're trying to trick me into saying I would have gone to Harvard. No, I would have taken more history and, of course, I would have tried to get better grades all around.

E. John Rosenwald Jr. '52, Tuck '53

Senior Managing Director, Bear Stearns.

The person in my life who means more to me than anyone else is my wife, Pat. She went to Vassar. If I had spent more time at Vassar than I did at Smith, then I could have met Patty 15 years earlier.

Reggie Williams '76

Linebacker, Cincinnati Bengals.

I wouldn't pass up my senior year of wrestling—by graduating after senior fall—and thus the opportunity to defend my Ivy League heavyweight wrestling crown. Athletics have become such a business for me that I really appreciate a sport like college wrestling in which people participate purely for sport. And you hate to think that you lost your last match in a Dartmouth uniform.

Ann Fritz Hackett '76

Vice President in Charge of Human Resources, Strategic Planning Associates.

I would take advantage of one of the foreign study programs, and work throughout my curriculum to develop an international focus and a better world understanding be it from the perspective of history, religion, or even economics. I would be bolder with my distributive requirements, and not at all intimidated by areas in which I had a sparse background or little knowledge. I also wish I'd worked more closely with a faculty member on some sort of research, to get more involved in their world as well. And I don't think I appreciated the depth of lectures and concerts and theatre and films going on every day; that kind of richness in one locale just doesn't exist after graduation.

Donna Bascom '73

Vice President, Business and Legal Affairs, CBS/Fox Video.

First, I would have liked to dabble more than I didwandered into English, art history—instead of staying in the social sciences. Second, I wish I were at Dartmouth now, and not 15 years ago. It would have been such a great place to go to school today. From what I've seen, things have improved enormously for women—when I was there it was hard to find a ladies' room.

Judson Hale '55

Editor, Yankee Magazine, Old Farmer's Almanac.

I would make sure that I always threw up in private.

Steve Kelley '81

Syndicated cartoonist, San Diego Union

I would spend a term abroad and take the constitutional law course from Professor Starzinger that I never took but should have.

David Shribman '76

National Political Correspondent, The Wall Street Journal.

If I had a chance to do Dartmouth again, I'd take more English and more economics; I'd spend more time on the river and at Moosilauke; and I'd try to figure out a way to make the four years last an awful lot longer than four years.

Jim Beattie '76

MBA student, former major league pitcher.

Knowing what I know now, I probably would have majored in math instead of art.

George Munroe '43

Chairman of the Finance Committee, Phelps Dodge Corporation.

Initially, I tended to rely on the catalog descriptions of courses I was considering. As I look back on it, I think the best way to choose courses is by the professors—take the great teachers, and you'll probably end up with the richest rewards. And since I ended up with a mining company, it might have been helpful to have taken a geology course but I didn't know at that time.

Pamela Love '79

Associate in Municipal Finance, Kidder Peabody.

Gut reaction? Not much. I had a terrific time at Dartmouth and really enjoyed the people I met and the things I studied. Although my courses had little direct bearing on what I do professionally, I think they were all very useful as building blocks.

Love took a year off from Dartmouth to pursue her dancinginterests and spent much of her senior year in West Africa working on an honors thesis in government. She is also a graduateof the Harvard Business School.

Paul Tsongas '62

Partner, Foley, Hoag & Eliot.

I would try to master a language, and I would take more courses in philosophy and theology, the more thoughtful courses.

Grant Tinker '47

President, GTG Entertainment.

I would do it exactly the same way. I would just like to do it over.

If you could relive college, how would you divide your time?

Geisel is also known as Dr. Seuss

Rosenwald has worked at Bear Stearns in various capacities,most recently as president, since his graduation from Tuck. Heis a Trustee of the College.

Williams lost two points for stalling during his last NCAAwrestling match. He reports that his opponent weighed in atabout 350 pounds—to Reggie's 208—and had oozing warts onhis shoulders. "I didn't want to touch the guy," recalls Williams."In the final seconds of the match I tried to pick him up and justgot his feet off the ground when I collapsed and he lay on top ofme."

Fritz Hackett, who is also a graduate of the Stanford BusinessSchool, is based in London. In 1979 she became the first womanto be elected to Dartmouth's Board of Trustees.

One of Dartmouth's first female students, Bascom transferredhere after her sophomore year at Connecticut College. A Phi BetaKappa graduate of Dartmouth, she also earned a law degree atHofstra University.

After getting drunk and vomiting on the late Dean JosephMac Donald, Hale was expelled from Dartmouth and drafted intothe Army. During his third year in the service he contractedtuberculosis and wrote to Dartmouth that his dying wish wasto be readmitted; the College obliged him. The discovery of effective T.B. medication enabled him to accept the deans' compassionate offer, and he graduated with the class of '58. Theincident is described in Hale's autobiography, The Education of a Yankee.

Former Dartmouth track team member Kelley, who started workat the San Diego Union immediately after graduation, does standup comedy as a hobby.

Shribman, who has also worked for The New York Times, TheWashington Star, and The Buffalo Evening News, is currentlycovering the 1988 presidential election for the Journal.

Beattie signed with the New York Yankees after his junior yearand, after three years in minor league baseball, was brought upto the Bronx in 1978. In 1980 he was traded to the SeattleMariners for whom he played until his retirement last February.He is now an MBA student at the University of Washington.

Munroe, who served for 17 years as Phelps Dodge's chief executive officer, was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and worked hisway through Harvard Law School playing basketball for the Boston Celtics. From 1953 to 1954 he was a justice of the U.S.Court of Restitution Appeals of the Allied High Commission forGermany in Nuremberg. Munroe is a trustee of the College.

Tsongas, who worked in Ethiopia as a Peace Corps volunteer fortwo years after Dartmouth, is also a graduate of the Yale LawSchool. From 1979 to 1984 he served as a United States Senatorfrom Massachusetts.

Tinker is the former president of MTM Enterprises, Inc., producers of "Mary Tyler Moore" and other television programs.He is also a former chairman of NBC.