The Start of the College Adventure

Cathie breaking the rules

With my computer being offline for most of the month of December due to my own stupidity I had lots of time to think about those first few weeks of being at college.  Usually I can sit down and write these stories in a couple of hours but this one has been started and erased many times over the last week.  It really never dawned on me until the last couple of weeks how much that year at Stephens College caused a lot of changes in me.  Maybe that is called growing up or at the very least, the beginning of that transition from childhood to being responsible for one's self.

Arriving at Stephens was actually quite devastating. I have always told people I am really quite shy which no one believes.  It has always been an effort to meet new people and know what to do or say. But at the same time there has always been the desire to be liked and to have friends. Growing up and living in the same town for eighteen years made it easy for me to have friends just because I had known them all my life.

So, here I was in a group of eighteen hundred girls I did not know, who appeared to be so self-assured, had beautiful clothes and came from exciting places.  To top it off I had Cathie for a room mate. There were many times in those first few weeks that if I would have had the courage to ask to change room mates I would have.  As time passed there were many times the dorm mother asked if I wanted to room with someone else that I would laugh to myself and tell her that maybe I could help Cathie be a better person. Some how Cathie's constant antics, total disorganization and love of people drew me in.  It got to the point where I was almost as good as she was at getting us into trouble.

Looking back now I have begun to realize that the eight of us living at the end of the hall together probably all wondered what we were doing there.  Somehow we all managed to blend together in a little group we called "the Big Eight".  Although we all made other friends at Stephens we relied on each other in the good and bad times and spent a lot of our free time together.  

Pam, Sally, Woodie, Donna, Cathie, Marty Mo

When classes started I realized that perhaps I had gotten in over my head.  All the classes were fine except for the ones in Theater and Drama which was my intended major.  Five minutes into the first class I was trying to fade into the chair dressed in my plaid wool jumper and weejuns.  Everyone in that department was dressed in black tights and ponchos, had long flowing hair and wore sunglasses even at night.  Sorry, I had gone through the "beatnik" phase when I was in the ninth grade and did not find it very appealing.  Besides with the affected speech patterns everyone had I hardly understood anything they were saying.

Thankfully after the first week of classes you had a meeting with your advisor for him to see how your classes were going.  I hope I did not sit there and cry since I was so unhappy but he did get the idea that I did not fit well in Drama department.  By a stroke of luck he was the head of the Television, Radio and Film department and instantly switched all the drama classes to TV, Radio and Film. Have to say that I felt at home in that genre.  The only class that was challenging was General American Speech.  It was difficult to rid myself of the Okie accent that I did not know I had.

The student-advisor relationship at Stephens was pretty impressive.  Mr. Wheeler, my advisor, not only kept check on you - to the extent that if you missed a class he called you on the phone to see what the reason was - but he also had a little get together with all his students once a month.  Usually we were invited to his home for a cookout or dinner on a Sunday evening with his wife and three small children. I guess this gave him a chance to study us and see how we were doing. It gave me that little touch of home and family life that you tend to miss on your first adventure away from home.

Driving through Norman recently on a football game day I realized how much things have changed since I was in college.  The second weekend I was in Columbia there was a University of Missouri football game. Stephens girls were not allowed to have or to drive cars.  Going to the game meant walking to the stadium, which was quite a hike, with your girl friends or a date.  Everyone dressed up to go to the game and if you were lucky enough to have a date you sported a huge mum in the black and yellow colors of the Missouri Tigers.  I can remember walking to the game with a boy named Skip in my pleated skirt, sweater, knee socks and loafers with that flower pinned on my shoulder. After the game we had dinner and then went to a mixer (dance) at Stephens.  It was the first college game I had ever been to and the whole day was so much fun.

Perhaps the most startling difference in going to college then and now was phones. Of course there were no cell phones and there were no phones in the dorm rooms. Each floor had a phone on both ends of the hall on every floor. Calls could come in from the outside or from the desk in the lobby of the dorm.  It may sound awful but actually it was rather nice.  If you decided going out with someone was not a good idea then you could happen not to be there or if your parents were calling to complain about money you didn't have to take the call. Everyone was good about leaving notes on your door stating what calls you had while you were out.

It may be that a lot of girls going off to college for the first time, away from parental supervision, would take the opportunity to become a little wilder than they were at home.  In some ways perhaps we all did but basic lessons and morality instilled at home kept us pretty much in line.That is not to say we did not have a heck of a good time.

Did Cathie and I really exit a party through a bathroom window?
How did Sally break her nose on a date?
Was hitch-hiking to a banned night club the really smart thing to do?
How does one smuggle someone out of a hospital right after surgery for a pizza and beer?
Can a person drink 23 pony cans of Colt-45 and still walk?
If your father is the President of a bank did he really teach you to switch to a red pen when you are overdrawn?
Jefferson City is within the city limits of Columbia isn't it?
Why do I know so much Hebrew when I am not Jewish?
What would we have all done without Pam?

Lots of questions to figure out the answer to.