Among the Ivy

Classes have started. And I have already officially fallen asleep doing my homework. I think this might be a bad sign.

My classes so far look like they’ll be interesting and a lot of work. I’ve already heard some horror stories about one professor (the class I haven’t had yet).

Turns out that there is a girl in my program who grew up in Romania. I talked with her in Romanian yesterday and I think we’ll be good friends! She had never met an American in the States who speaks Romanian, and I didn’t think there was a single Romanian living in New England. We’re both happy!

Kirk has learned to count to ten in Romanian along with a random assortment of other words. I also taught him how to knit. Things are going splendidly!

Today was library orientation at Dartmouth for my program. We spent two hours learning to navigate the online databases and then fifteen minutes as an afterthought visiting the stacks (“…Oh, you want to see the books?”). Libraries have changed since my days as an undergrad. The Dartmouth library is enormous and there are actual books even if you don’t see them at first. They’re enclosed in a boxlike building encased in the rest of the library and sort of remind you of a controlled-environment cold war bunker. After you go down several flights of very narrow, metal staircases to floors and floors of “books” you arrive at the bunker. Just kidding. I think. We also found a Dartmouth student who had been missing for the past thirteen years down at stack sublevel -3. He no longer had eyeballs, having adjusted to the cave-like chambers. It’s sad to have no eyeballs when you’re surrounded by nothing but thousands of books. It’s really no wonder that they’re really into online databases . . . they had to find a solution to all of the students who used to disappear into the library stacks and never returned.

Welcome to ivy league life. I realized another difference between the Dartmouth/Ivy League experience and the average college experience the other day at the welcome barbeque. All three guys at my table mentioned that they are really into squash. My nephew is really into squash. The difference is that their squash is a sport and my nephew’s squash is dinner. Then, a little later, a girl came up and said she was going to watch several others play croquet. I nearly choked on my spring roll.

Squash and croquet. I like croquet, especially when used as impromptu miniature golf. I never knew it was a sanctioned ivy league sport. I don’t know anything about squash. I had brought my frisbee, but no one seemed to know how to play.

I think I’m hitting culture shock again.

~ by bemis on 27 June 2009.