Vassar College - Vassarion Yearbook (Poughkeepsie, NY)

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We were terribly busy. Five courses-hard ones, and we had stayed on the paper, and were wasting our youth in the cause of better journalism. We took trips to the Tabard as spring came along. Dramatics was an unexplored fieldg we made scenery and put on shorts and waved our lovely limbs in the kicking chorus in Soph Party. The man from Yale was in the audience, and he seemed impressed. We acquired a large and beautiful pic- ture of him to put on the bureau, and our roommates admired him noisily. He was going overseas in a week. A pity. Despite all the activity, we were doing better Work than last year. We looked over our freshman papers and quietly shud- dered, and then wrote our first really good term paper. We thought it was our life work and we stayed up all night typing it. Of course, we were practically flunking psych, but we can't be geniuses at everything. Besides, Miss Jones said We organized our material well. What do you want? C term we let up a little-after all, we deserved a rest some- times. It was really a wonderful tan. We perfected a foolproof scheme for cleaning a john in thirteen minutes flat, and we prowled up and down Arlington gazing at the new lavender and cerise suits. We became terribly witty and went to Founder's Day brandishing a twig, disguised as Birnam Wood. We were taking a couple of three hundred courses. They weren't much harder, and they were much more interesting. We thought per- haps our real bent was for scholarship. gi-jf' ' V . 2 , fx jl 4 , 1 A la! lu! S ! p J UWM ,N-N , 63 y ' f , l x J -l -- Ll I ir... 5 O ,. s -'uf ' ' 1 ,4rf,.,. ' f f' len rj- '7 V-I I., . - - ., 1- , V 1 Q UDE, Q: Wgtph L 1 . Q93 I qs l 1 T 7 M f'l ,, Q - ,, X ,1 ,g, .I .Q i , ,I 3 .' ix, y A A i ' ,',.'k.,! X Y - ' xr , 1, ..- . ' 1 '1 X. QXIHI p A J-' :Ill 5 ' ' 1 f 1 ' ' I . : , 1 fi' Y Y J hill l, jp, ' Ai A ii ' 'Xu 5 ' t l lil. 6 'A X t ll' 1' H l ' M- la kh!-my 1 ll l 4 li l - li llllli I I I n ,ft L pill I 'lldli' l xl . ff' f . ' t l f--sa lv ,l f .shy un f L WLUE1 7 4 l ' M 4 K H, g 17

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X L, -1 3 ln l E xi' x 1 5 JW 1 I' 1 1! .Ax , Q ll jj l T l' 60? Were we sophomores or juniors? Nobody was quite sure, we were convinced we were juniors, since we would graduate next year, the seniors were convinced we were sophomores, since we had been freshmen last year. It didn't really matter, we were sure we had found our niche. For we had all the advantages: nobody was worrying about us, and we had no particular respon- sibilities, like the jolly miller beside the river Dee. We were up- perclassmeng we had reached the apex of life. We looked over the new crop of freshmen critically. They sure look green, some of us said. They sure look sophisticated, others remarked. A nice crowd on the whole, but not as good as us. After all, we were upperclassmen. We noticed though, how many men they had. We went to the mail about one-fifth as much as we had, and We got about one-fifth as much mail. Never mind. There was still the man at Yale. We thought. He hadn't written in three weeks. We kept our good resolutions faithfully until the middle of October, and then something happened. We stumbled upon the dangerous knowledge that it was possible to go to history un- prepared, and that one was not necessarily flunked if a paper was turned in three days late. We read Mein Kampf steadily for three weeks completely ignoring all our work, and then came the crisis. Happy freshmen crises, with three whole days to do a note topic! We watched the dawn come in the window, and swore never again. We were wrong. It happened the next month. 'TF lil- all f f W giggle 1 K' ll , A Ng Q F ll t- i 6' 'iff - ll . 0 -, jbgflfl l A' Q f f 4' - I li l 1 j ll 5 ll l l l l fi l ' ll Q j s, 1 l - I V' V I i ' 1 'If 'f 1' II j X X y r ,I 1 I Vljylf X 'wg w r' l r f X Ml 16 1 if ll

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dchclem Grand old Seniors? We were not sure. It was like having a birthday--you expected to feel older, and you didn't. We had football games in the corridor with the pillows off the daybed, and the freshmen down the hall looked surprised at our levity. We were surprised that they were surprised, and it worried us. On our twenty-first birthday We went out and climbed trees to prove to ourselves that we were still young. Of course, we had caps and gowns, and marching up to the chapel while the bells played a medieval student's song, We felt academic and part of a long line of tradition, until We became conscious of all the blue jeans around us. Most of the time we were too busy to worry about it. Why did We do extra-curricular work? Why couldn't We just sit and do the things We wanted to do? We finally decided that we were doing the things we wanted to do. We just wanted to do too many things. The fall passed peacefully enough. We had to write a thesis sometime, but it wasn't due for months. We could not under- stand why the professor kept harping on it, and we did a little work in self-defense. We finished the term without undue strain -it seemed a little silly to worry about exams with comprehen- sives just around the corner, and we wondered what compre- hensives were like. We asked our professors. One smiled kindly and said not to worry. The other chuckled a low, demonic laugh. We were not reassured, but we didn't think about them much. '1-.. X 4 ' in I , R 1' '31 3, U .F I Q 115' I Y V, T ': 2-. -. y ,. V -Atv 'rpg- H:- e e j iw, E on QQ Q Q - ... - tirri s K - a.j I 1 A Ai x. I A V K 4, ' in I N '- 18 r,..., ! W if l l,-