So many responded to the question, “Was there a time in your Dartmouth experience when you realized perhaps you weren’t quite as smart or as good as you thought you were?” that I spread them across two issues. Wayne Letizia recalls his first semester grades, “when I received a C-plus in chemistry. Quite a shock for a geek who had gotten all A’s in high school.” John Isaacs thought he “was pretty hot stuff academically with excellent grades in high school and good SAT scores. But one D, three C-minus, three C-pluses, and one lonely A took me down several pegs.” Cory Aden-Wansbury “was a premed planning on majoring in biology when two consecutive D’s in biology courses and an academic warning gave me a wakeup call.” For Sam Ostrow “it was ‘Chem 3’ with the same book I had used in high school; that D at Dartmouth convinced me that I would only play a doctor on TV.” Dave Sclove said, “At the end of spring term of freshman year, after six A’s, a B, a C-plus, and two citations, I got a D in art history (which was supposed to be a ‘gut’)!” John Bash remembers that “even before classes started, I submitted my masterpiece of freshman thought and expression, an essay on C.P. Snow’s ‘Two Cultures’ and the need to bridge science and the humanities. It was returned covered with red marks.” Joe Alviani remembers “the one subject where I felt I could excel was English, or so I thought until my first assignment. The paper I had worked long and hard on expecting a good, if not superior, grade came back with so many red marks it must have depleted Professor Bien’s red pen.” Gary Atkins was proud of his writing abilities, “but my writing ‘abilities’ were not at all present according to my elderly English professor. The first paper I submitted received a shocking (to me) E-2. ‘E’ meant failing, but ‘E-2’ meant you were the bottom of the bottom!” Doug Coonrad recalls being “dared by the more experienced Mountaineering Club instructors to do a ‘hasty rappel technique’ down Bartlett Tower. The rope wound around the tower, my feet slipped away, and I found myself dangling by my arms while looking down at the tops of some very tall pine trees. Once down safely the other instructors were laughing and told me none of them had ever tried that technique before.” Finally, Bob Reid recalls living in the “Wigs” and crossing the river on the ice one winter. “A Vermont state trooper came down the highway with lights and siren on, stopped, and beckoned me ashore. He drove me back to campus, where he said, ‘Ya know, you look smarter than that.’ To this day that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.” To read all these stories, go to www.1967.dartmouth.org. Be sure to contact Bruce Pacht and tell him you’re coming to the class of 1967 55th reunion on September 23-24 in Hanover!

—Larry Langford, P.O. Box 71, Buckland, MA 01339; 1967damnotes@gmail.com