"Are you an upperclassman?" the young woman asked the man in Thayer Dining Hall. The wisdom in his spectacled eyes must have given him away.
"I am a clueless 'shmen," she admitted. "Can you tell me how I can get a milk shake?"
It is a scene repeated fall after fall. The temperature fluctuates between 20 and 80 degrees, the trees along the Connecticut River begin to get that orange, reddish tinge and the silly freshmen ask silly questions, again and again and again.
Convocation officially opens the school year today but really no one is fooled. The presidential speeches and keynote address are nice but it's the blasting of the "Salty Dog Rag" in front of Robinson Hall, the browsing through textbooks in the book store, the friends huddled by the radio cursing the Penn Quakers and the crisscrossing of the Green between Baker Library and the Hopkins Center that really mark the start of fall term in Hanover.