The Dancing Sausage Web Journal

Roger sent me a blast from the past at Hampshire: advice on how to survive the place. Collected by one of my exes and by the future Drag King of Philadelphia, it summarizes much of the folk wisdom about the place at the time. It rings true well beyond the boundaries of the school, in part as a measure of a college experience spent in the proximity of hippies (“Cute boys are often big stoners. Beware.”), in part as unusually sage general undergraduate advice even without the pot (“keep a perspective on how unnatural it is to live with all people between the ages of 18-23 yrs.”), but, unsurprisingly for those of us who have travelled further down this path, it also comprises pitch-perfect advice for grad school in places (“The terms of your education are 100% negotiated with faculty. NO requirements otherwise.”)

And I know one or two of these comments must have been written by my friends or by me. “CAFFIENE!!!!!!!!!” was Evan; that’s his misspelling and the same enthusiasm which led to a brief period of blindness after a marathon four-day-coding-consuming-nothing-but-Mountain-Dew session. “Mod Bootie is Bad Bootie” is Evan’s misspelling of Peter’s timeless dictum (confidential to him: ZOMG PJO CUTE BEBBEZZ THEY LOOK EXACTLY LIKE YOU! Who knew that naming your kids Romulus and Remus could instantly confer such gravitas.) Many of the quotes on doing projects and not taking classes might have been me, though if it was “Boys don’t make passes at girls who take classes” should have been on there. So I’m guessing it was “Do what you want to do! Not what the “invisible” structure of Hampshire wants. You are being flushed down the toilet: Do you swim or spin?” Then again, that might have been Nat; it bears the marks of his hyperbole.