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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]is dmouth the most laxbro of all ivies? sounds like it.

*yuck*[/quote]

a great school in some ways, but, yes, very laxbro;

my nephew's there now and when we have visited almost every guy you see is wearing a backwards baseball cap

if that's your cuppa tea, fine, but if not, there aren't many alternatives in Hanover, NH; our nephew advised our son, "On Saturday night, you're either drunk off your ass or watching other people get drunk off their asses."      [/quote]

I think the fact you judge these kids by their hats shows a sort of close-minded attitude.  One of the things I learned at Dartmouth was not to judge a book by its cover.  Most of the kids there were so much more than what they seemed on the surface.  Had they not been, it is unlikely they would have had what it took to apply to and get into this school to begin with.  I remember being floored by the "dumb jock" football player on my hall when he opened his mouth in my Shakespeare class and made a cogent and insightful observation about Richard III.  Or the guy I worked with at the dining hall who was on the crew team, looked like a Greek god, and was in the frattiest of frats.  But he was studying engineering and would talk constantly about ideas he had to bring clean drinking water to communities in Africa where it wasn't readily available.  Or my Deadhead friend who went on to become an incredible and accomplished doctors, who is one of the most compassionate people I know.  My roommate seemed like a major sorority ditz when I first met her, but it turned out she was smart as a whip, took an insanely difficult math and science course load, and breezed through it all.  Or a guy I knew who came from incredible wealth and dressed like the ultimate prepster but turned out to be really nice and down to earth.  Or my friend who showed up in combat boots and fatigues the first week of school who turned out to be well versed in Greek and Latin and played the piano beautifully.  Or the girl I knew who came from a tough urban neighborhood, seemed really rough around the edges, but who fell in love with the romance languages and became fluent in French and Italian and could recite Baudelaire.  And on and on and on.

As far as Saturday nights go, it seems to me your nephew is carrying on the classic Dartmouth tradition of talking up the "play hard" reputation of the school.  I was frequently guilty of that myself.  People had this expectation that I must have been raging all weekend long because that is what Dartmouth kids do, right?  So I would share those stories because people seemed to eat it up, and frankly I liked the attention it got me when I was 19 or 20 years old.  I didn't usually talk about the Saturday night shifts I spent working at the dining hall or checking out books in the reserve corridor (and trust me, plenty of students were in the library on Saturday nights), or the nights I spent in my dorm room with friends playing Trivial Pursuit, poker or watching videos while scarfing down chicken sandwiches.  I went to tons of performances at the Hop and sat through more pretentious foreign films than I care to admit, saw many comedians and bands at Collis, and yes, went to my share of frat parties, where I would spend most of the night on the dance floor.

Finally,  this Saturday night alone, your nephew can go to an Alvin Ailey dance performance, see the films Zero Dark Thirty, Amour, or Passion for Snow, attend a performance of the Dartmouth Wind Symphony, attend a Women's basketball or Men's ice hockey game, or catch up on some studying in the library (open til 2am on a Saturday night for a reason).  That's just for starters.  [/quote]

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