{"id":208,"date":"2024-01-16T02:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-16T02:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/andydawkins.com\/?p=208"},"modified":"2024-01-01T18:28:13","modified_gmt":"2024-01-01T18:28:13","slug":"college-roommates-second-daily-dose-of-freshman-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/andydawkins.com\/?p=208","title":{"rendered":"College Roommates [second daily dose of Freshman Year]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Later I pledged that fraternity, not because they had can openers, but because the president of the frat was also the student council president, a good student (and a prominent Minnesota politician to this day), and this frat house had a thing called \u201cProject Give-A-Damn\u201d where every Tuesday afternoon we all went and tutored inner-city grade school kids.\u00a0 We knew how to have fun, and<\/span> get good grades, and<\/span> be kind to others.\u00a0 (Of course pledging the fraternity, and some of our antics, make for a great story, but for another day.)<\/p>\n

After being accepted at Hamline, I received a questionnaire in the mail asking to mark my housing preference:\u00a0 all men\u2019s dorm, co-ed dorm or \u201chonor housing.\u201d\u00a0 I checked honor housing not expecting they\u2019d put me in one \u2013 given my needing-a-new-leaf background \u2013 so I was surprised when the next letter I got said I was assigned to live freshman year at the Sherman House Honor House with seven other freshman, three sophomores, and a senior R.A. (Resident Assistant).\u00a0\u00a0 Turns out all the locals knew the \u201chonor houses\u201d were just a bunch of run-down houses the school had bought across the street from the campus, slated for demolition the following year to build new dormitories, and so mostly only us out-of-staters, who didn\u2019t know better, had picked that as our choice for where to reside.<\/p>\n

Us Sherman Housers were quite an assemblage from all over the country, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa and one kid from Bird Island, MN.\u00a0 Me, the New Jersey kid (also named Andy), and the Bird Island kid were assigned the large second floor bedroom overlooking the big lawn by the girls\u2019 dormitory.\u00a0 Bird Island was still unpacking when I arrived, and I was dismayed to see he\u2019d already placed a pen and pencil holder on the desk he wanted, not because I wanted that desk too, but because the holder was emblazoned with \u201cIn God We Trust.\u201d\u00a0 There being two Andys, one of us had to pick up a nickname quick.\u00a0 Nobody took to my suggestion that they call me \u201cDirt.\u201d\u00a0 (Why I was called \u201cDirt\u201d since third grade is another story.)\u00a0 Second Saturday of the Fall, O.J. Simpson was coming to play the Univ. of Minnesota Golden Gophers, and after we went to that game, played our own tackle football game.\u00a0 When the other Andy tackled me, he said \u201cTake that O.J.,\u201d and so in college I was known as O.J.<\/p>\n

\"OJ<\/a>

OJ and J.J. in the same mud?<\/p><\/div>\n

Even the sophomores were impressed that I arrived with my own set of fake IDs and pretty quickly our R.A. gave up on us as incorrigible and moved in with his girlfriend off campus, giving us free reign to decide What Is Fun.\u00a0\u00a0 Only problem was that too many of my roommates were just getting their first taste of fun and went slightly overboard, forgetting they had to study too.\u00a0 One of the sophomores and four of the freshman in Sherman House flunked out that year having too much fun.\u00a0 Fortunately I was in the habit of getting up early, getting to class on time, reading the assignments, and asking intelligent questions in class.\u00a0 That\u2019s all it took to get above average grades, with plenty of time left over for fun.\u00a0 The thing that got my grades to law school admission level was never missing Dr. Marsh\u2019s Saturday morning freshman class on the Great Depression.\u00a0 (By my sophomore year the school had decided that asking freshmen to wake up before noon on Saturdays was improvident and discontinued Saturday classes.)<\/p>\n

Dr. Marsh was impressed with my genuine interest in history and got me a job being a Tour Guide for the County Historical Society, where I got a reputation for personalizing the tours with anecdotes about the individuals the places were named for:\u00a0 F. Scott Fitzgerald\u2019s home, J.J. Hill\u2019s mansion, the Gibbs\u2019 farm, and so on.\u00a0 I enlisted Dr. Marsh for help on the research, and of course after that, could only get A\u2019s from him.\u00a0 Took as many of Dr. Marsh\u2019s courses as I could.<\/p>\n

The first week back after Xmas break it was really cold in Minnesota.\u00a0 Good timing for our \u201cSherman House Purple-Passion Body-Painting Bathing-Suit Party.\u201d\u00a0 We went to St. Paul\u2019s \u201cWorn-a-Bit\u201d shop and secured enough mattresses to spread across our entire attic floor, covered the walls with shiny tin foil, borrowed some yellow-flashing traffic safety barriers, bought maybe 50 tubes of body paint, mixed a purple passion punch in two big milk canisters from a Bird Island farm, and invited a half-dozen other guys telling them they could only get in if they brought two or more dates, and everybody had to be wearing swim suits underneath.\u00a0 Until I got married I used one of the brightly splattered sheets as a curtain in my several bachelor pads.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow:\u00a0 On the Way to Mardi Gras<\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

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Later I pledged that fraternity, not because they had can openers, but because the president of the frat was also the student council president, a good student (and a prominent Minnesota politician to this day), and this frat house had … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/andydawkins.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/andydawkins.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/andydawkins.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/andydawkins.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/andydawkins.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=208"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/andydawkins.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1652,"href":"http:\/\/andydawkins.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208\/revisions\/1652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/andydawkins.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/andydawkins.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/andydawkins.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}