Wheaton College - Nike Yearbook (Norton, MA)

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The Office HEN, in the closing days of September, Josephine College, a Tyrolean hat cocked over her curls and a mental question mark in her attitude toward college, clicks up the steps of the Administration Building to register as a member of the class of Four- Years-From-Now, she finds to her relief that all is not strange and alien. In this re- ception room she waited for her subfreshman interview with Miss Ziegler and counted the candles on the chandelier, and now here is Miss Ziegler herself—deep-voiced, tall, quiet- ly reassuring—her first Wheaton friend. Someone young with a friendly smile— “I’m Miss Shelley’’—gives her a handful of bewildering appointment cards and papers. “Would you like to register?’’, and the new Wheatonite, clutching her cards, follows an upperclassman down a short dim corridor. In a high-windowed room, stands a table with piles of little white cards and myriad stubby pencils. There is a desk, and behind it a book and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, and a pair of eyes with an expression that is pseudo-stern. ‘‘Howdy.”’ Miss Young. More cards—typed and inked in red and blue and black—and the freshman follows her guide to find the room indicated by one of the cards—a room which is barer than bare. . . But before many weeks the bare room is littered with pillows and pennants and posters, the red-figured cards mean some- thing after all, and there are names to go with all the strange new faces. One day, however, she receives something of a jolt—a yellow card in her mailbox! “Will you please call at the office of the Dean of Freshmen to see Miss Littlefield?’’ What does it mean? A.P.2 Too much noise? Did that Sophomore really report her? With definite misgivings, Josie sticks the card in the edge of her mirror under the snapshot of her brother until the appointed day... . The girl who looked like a senior but wasn't, turned out to be Miss Albro. ‘You may go right in,’’ she says, and there is Miss Mirtam FeroniA CARPENTER Littlefield. Forgetting her misgivings, Josie is soon telling her all about her old school, her courses, and her maybe-major, and it isn’t terrifying at all. On a later day, she learns to the depletion of her allowance that the Petty drawings and the Dartmouth banner gooed on the wall and the Klieg lights in her study lamp go not unrequited, and a white slip—' To Wheaton College, Dr.’’—turns her footsteps to the Bursar’s door. She can peek in at Miss Dunkle in her little office while Miss Shep- ard receipts the bill behind a barred win- dow, and Miss Robinson and Miss Wood- ward type furiously in the outer office. Information is to the Wheaton girl as the Delphi Oracle to the Greeks. Mad, with a

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telephone in each hand, nods toward the flowers on the desk, and fishes the keys to the Mary Lyon record cabinet out of the drawer. Mrs. Potter meticulously figures out the bus and train schedules from Norton to Kalamazoo and back, or tells someone what's playing at the movies in Taunton. At regular intervals, a voice over the house phone says, “Hello. This is Eleanor Tracy at Information. We've a telegram for you ...”’ Leaf after leaf is ripped from the calendar. Course card after course card is placed on Miss Shumaker’s desk in the Registrar's office. Miss Wheaton reads the latest New Yorker while waiting for her conference with the Dean, and chats with Miss Barker who can—wonder of wonders !—work and talk at the same time. Once inside, there are amaz- ing small animals on Miss Carpenter’s desk, and the serious business of overcutting or a changed major is topped off with a lively story of Bruin, or Lion’s latest antic and an invitation to come over to Hollyhock House. The President's office remains something of an inner sanctum, but the Wheaton girl catches occasional glimpses of Dr. Park as she goes past the window on her way to class, and other glimpses of Miss Remick through the open door of her office. And sometimes when the door of the President’s SarAH BELLE YOUNG Extma Dorotuy LitTLEeFIELD office 1s open, she can see the green walls, and the fireplace, and the portrait of Eras- mus. Perhaps her first acquaintance with the Alumnae Appointment Office comes when, after spending the summer as a camp coun- cillor, she fills out a summer work blank there. As the years slip by, she dons cap and gown and begins to think about appoint- ment pictures. Miss Ridlon’s twinkle be- comes more and more a part of every day, and the Wheaton girl finds herself coming more and more often to Miss Wadham and Miss Garfield for assistance in her problems of references and recommendations. Downstairs in the Administration Build- ing is Mr. Cutler’s office where she brings lamps that refuse to function and posters in need of framing. Here too is the postoffice, that torture of the hopeful female, and here the bulletin boards with their announce- ments and warnings and ‘‘Please sign be- low’’ signs. The Bookstore is one of the focal points of a Wheaton girl’s life. Whether she has lost her last pencil or gotten a run in her last pair of stockings, Mrs. Perry is her salvation. She spends hours trying to per- suade herself to buy a special edition of her favorite poet and then has to force herself not to. Maybe she succumbs to The New Yorker instead. [ 10 |