I decided to lead a Dartmouth Outing Club Trip because, as a senior who had been studying abroad since sophomore summer, I felt that I needed a proper reintroduction to Dartmouth. It turned out to be one of the most fun and rewarding experiences I have had at Dartmouth.
Over dinner recently with five '95 women who had also led trips, we spent three hours trying to outdo one another with stories about our awesome trippees. I led an all-male strenuous hiking trip and when I first met my 'shmen, my heart sank as I looked thought, "help, I have rambo trippees." As I got to know them. though, their friendliness and enthusiasm about Dartmouth dispelled my fears.
One of them, a 200- pound baseball recruit from rural Minnesota confessed to me while on the bus to the trail head the real reason he chose Dartmouth over the University of Wiconsin. His greatest dream was to become an author of children's stories, and what better place to do that than at the alma mater of Dr. Seuss. Mr. Rogers, and Captain Kangaroo.
This example of the renaissance trippee I recounted to my fellow trip leaders and it was surpassed by my friend Erica, and her trippee from Philadelphia. When she first met him, he was wearing an Eagles football jersey and a cap signed by half the team. Apparently, the first half of their trip, he talked of sports incessantly. But over couscous dinner on the second night, he entertained his companions with a perfect rendition of "The Love-Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."
Freshman are wonderful - like a breath of fresh air on the Hanover plain. They have an open mindedness and an outgoingness that we upperclassmen have forgotten. They plunge excitedly into new experiences, challenge one another to do the Salty Dog triple time, and square dance with glee at Everett's command.
They have better manners, and they dress better than we do. Even the men's men are terribly friendly - the ones who you know will one day scowl beneath their Phi Delt caps as they trudge accross the green and wear t-shirts that say "Go Away".
At Moosilauke Lodge, I heard many conversations among my trippees concerning their girlfriends. My immediate reaction was to tell them thier HTHs would not last until homecoming, but then I caught myself and thought of how negative and jaded a thought that was. That is the wonderful thing about 'shmen, is their positive attitude, and it can teach us old upperclass curmudgeons a great deal.
