In lieu of diary entries for my days at Cornell, I wrote Karen about what was going on in my new life. In a letter of September 24, 1957, I included a description, albeit a somewhat exaggerated one, of my first days during which I attempted to become a graduate student.
My existence here at Cornell has been a series of frustrations and gropings . I have more questions than a freshman. I’m used to having the answers, but here I don’t, and have problems finding them. For one thing, there are classes. Or rather the lack of them that worries me.
At 3:30 Monday, I entered Barton Hall, a gym slightly larger than the entire Men’s Physical Education building at Kent. I lined up at a desk where they took away all my pre-registration IBM cards, except three. There were about a dozen I had received in the mail. I was directed to another line where a cop looked at one and pointed to the back of the room, a mile away, where I was to present one of the three remaining cards. He had just checked to see if I had it.
Then came a graduate line, which took some hunting to find. I was given more cards to fill out while waiting in a second graduate line where I left these cards and got some more! I then had my picture taken – they didn’t tell me why – gave up my cop-inspected card, signed up for an X-ray, and bought a year’s book of athletic tickets! Throughly confused, I hobbled to the information desk where a smiling undergraduate coed sat. I asked her: “What do I do now?” I don’t think she appreciated the question. After a few of her own, she said that was all. “But I don’t have any classes yet!” I wailed. She dried my tears and said, since I was a grad student, I didn’t get any. Here they have a liberal education!
So, I grabbed hold of the ivy hanging from her ponytail, swung up to the rafters with the cry of a wounded Kent Stater and watched. I conferred with a few other strange, misplaced grad students and we concluded we actually don’t have any classes assigned at registration. We have two weeks to sit in on any course and decide whether we want to accept that professor for a term or go somewhere else. After two weeks, we turn in to the Graduate School a list of the courses we’ve decided are worthwhile for the term. Occasionally (ha) your special committee will recommend courses – especially the ones they teach. However, at the moment, I don’t know the members of my special committee, since I haven’t chosen them yet! But never fear, I have two weeks to shop for them. And six weeks before they are nonreturnable.
So, learning all these bits of information the catalog neglected to mention, I climb down from the rafters and race to the exit to buy a committee. Instead, a hulking brute sticks out his white-bucked shoe, trips me, plants his khaki knee on my chest and murmurs: “Have you bought your calendar yet?” I slip him a bill and he rolls me out the door. I have registered.
Now comes the process of shopping for classes throughout the campus. As a searching grad student, I spoke with a series of departmental representatives about the offerings currently available. Originally, I planned for a schedule of 18 hours.
The Biochem man says take the departmental Seminar. I plan for 19 hours. The Biology man says 19 hours is too much. I talk the Bacteriology man into taking only the lecture and not the lab. It was in trying to find this one that I wandered into the agriculture school’s campus. It took me 30 minutes to find the building. The aggies only grunted answers, of a sort, on what directions to take.
I now have 16 hours and ask the Organic man if classes start on time. The Bacteriology class lets out at 11:50 and the organic begins at 12:00. I timed myself between the two buildings. It takes me 12 minutes – if I steal a horse from the stables. The organic man says he doesn’t know, since this is his first term here.
Then there are books. You can buy them at the Cornell Campus Store, a departmental madhouse in the center of the campus. The store advertizes five checkouts, each having an un-advertised line twenty feet or more long. The place puts a rush-hour at the KSU Campus Supply to shame.
I bought $34 of books and a $10 dissecting kit – used for emerging from the store (and later in a zoological course I plan on attending – it’s a bad hour for coffee so what the heck. I might as well get educated.) But really, I get $4.40 back. You save your receipts and get a 10% discount. They’re better than green stamps.
I go over to The Straight to drown my sorrows in coke. I find an Activities Fair. Somehow, I subscribe to the “Cornell Daily Sun,” “The Cornell Writer,” – it looks and feels like the “Kent Writer” – and “The Widow” yearbook. In backing away, I stumble into the music room. Fortunately, they sense my monotone qualities and usher me to the general exhibits. I pass Pershing Rifles, Farm clubs, Religious Clubs, Theater Clubs, and just plain clubs. I almost signed up for rushing, but the guy was an SAE and he didn’t know Dean Nygreen, so I passed it up.
I then decide to go to the Ivy Room – a Cornellian Hub with long benches attached to tables without writing tops. Still, it doesn’t have that old atmosphere. Its inhabitants are bushy and tweedy.
So as the sun collapses into Lake Cayuga and the chimes burst forth in melodious disharmony, I slink off in my non-ivy trousers and jacket and journey home, ending my first two days at Cornell.