The Kid Gets a New Room

From the moment the kid was admitted to the class of 2002 the campus took on a new cast to my maternal eyes. I couldn't walk past a dorm without wondering if that's where he would be living. I pictured him leaning out a window at the Gold Coast to shout "Hi, Mom!" (Like that's really going to happen.) I pictured him moving into the Choates muttering "I can't believe I got this dorm." I wondered if he'd request the East Wheelock "Supercluster," with its built-in faculty masters and celebrity-studded lectures and cultural events. My mind swirling with his possibilities, I asked a group of young alums where they thought he should "Hitchcock," was the immediate response. "What's so special about that dorm? " I pressed. Again a quick return: "We lived there." The Fayerweathers, it turns out, is where the kid is going to live. And though he'd passed those dorms nearly every day of his life, he rushed to campus to see them in anew light. "Itlooks good," was his pronouncement.

nual treat on the Connecticut. Or meandering up and down Webster Avenue, where pool parties sprouted in July, blue plastic kiddie pools offering splashy, albeit pint-size, relief right up till the moment they broke. Or sprawling on the The kid's anticipation soared with the summer heat. He swam in the river, at the dock between the Ledyard Canoe Club and the half-finished new Ledyard Bridge. I pictured him canoeing through Tubestock, the floating combo of inner tubes and blaring music that's become an anlawn across from Silsby on the mid-August night the sophomore class staged a "drive-in" by projecting When Harry Met Sally onto the white walls of Blunt Alumni Center. "I can't wait till college starts," became the kid's mantra.

In a way it already had. A steady stream of Green paper had arrived all summer. A four page single-spaced letter from Dean of First-Year Students Peter Goldsmith (the kid claims he read it), a doublespaced two-pager from new President Jim Wright (I saw the kid read that one), and come-ons from several academic departments advertising their wares. Forms for this and forms for that. Info on the computerpackage. Spitting out just a bit of the Apple, Dartmouth, long a Macintosh campus, was officially giving students a choice for the first time. The '02s could buy either the curvaceous new ocean-blue iMac ("Cool!" said the kid) or (don't look, Mac addicts) a Windowsbased Dell package.

And, of course, the DOC trips were gearing up. Whereas most students were opting to hike the White Mountains, the kid chose to go canoeing. A wise decision for a kid who likes to shower, I said to myself. He won't have to wait until Moosilauke to get clean.

Meanwhile, though, there was a dry-land exercise to do. An assignment from the deans to prepare students for orientation-week discussions: read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. The kid went right out and bought the book. Not that he opened it right away. But for the first time he didn't grumble about having to start work even before the school year began. "I've heard it's a great book," is all he said. And I'm thinking, maybe this really is a brave new world.

Fayerweather Hall, Dartmouth College