Word: freshman
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...course, is that being dumb does not preclude being on the Dean's List. (Not that anyone has ever actually seen the Dean's List. When we do see deans making lists, they are usually putting down the names of people who are occupying their offices.) As a freshman, you soon learn that the level of academic competence demanded by Harvard is ridiculously low. Most of your work is graded by graduate students, who (rightly so) have little confidence in their ability to perceive intelligence. All you have to do is look as if you're trying and your paper...
...Excuse me, I see that the engaging flow, such as it is, of this narrative- cum -expose has been interrupted. The "shee-it" is the voice of my freshman roommate, First you must understand that "freshman roommate" is itself a perjorative term-a curious phenomenon given the fact that, not only did most of us have one, most of us were one. Mine happened to be from Mississippi. ("No, white, " I would explain, with the appropriate tone of annoyance to my outraged relatives.) What was a nice boy from Boston doing with a roommate like that? The fault...
...Still, the thing about freshmen roommates is that you don't really hate yours until you're a sophomore and by then it's too late. During freshman year, said roommate is indispensable. At best, he will share his mother's chocolate chip cookies with you (although by the time they arrive from Milwaukee they're sure to be broken). At worst, he will be petulantly difficult whenever you want to sleep a girl in overnight: Say, uh, would you mind very much if Jan and I used the room tonight? Didn't the two of you use it last...
Anyway, the point that the whole, by-now-soggy, shower episode was leading to before it was interrupted: as an incoming freshman, you can expect to be impressed with Harvard for about two and a half weeks. Long before that time, you will have stopped comparing college boards (the other guy's are always embarrassingly higher), and by the end of your first month, you will begin to wonder how so many stupid people ever managed to get into the place. By that time, you're playing one of the freshman's more amusing games, one called...
yourself it's nasty and you won't make it a habit, but basically you're pretty relieved that you had the strength to pull it off. For the freshman, all-nighters are necessitated by weekly expos papers (i. e. glorified compositions required by Harvard's compulsory writing course). No one ever begins them until the night before they're due, and no one ever completes them until a few minutes before class. It's the academic's version of Beat the Clock. Unfortunately for masochists, the competition falls off sharply by second semester. For by then everyone has learned...