Are You Ready?
August 26, 2011
Do you remember shopping for orange, red, and yellow sheets?
Packing your stereo, typewriter, hot plate?
This summer, many Kirkland mothers are anxiously getting their own children ready for college. Some of their offspring, in fact, will be attending Hamilton in the fall. Here’s a set of instructions that incoming Kirkland freshwomen received in June 1974 before arriving on the Hill for their first semester. Look at the checklist of items in What to Bring (the cross outs are mine from 1974!).
Are you ready?
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Kirkland College 
This is terrific! I didn’t recall the option of a linen service! Thanks for posting!!
Remember the phone booths in the suites? Life sure was different in a pre-cellphone, pre-computer world. Love the advice to bring one or two dress-up outfits for special occassions.
Rachel Dickinson K78
Hey Penny – I had the linen service. You’re lucky you missed it. While it was convenient, the sheets & towels were like burlap, and the washcloths were about 6″ x 6″. One year of it was enough (too much?) for me!
I have no doubt the Keehn cuisine was better than McEwen. After a month or so of cafeteria food, McDonald’s felt like gourmet dining!
My parents surprised me with the gift of an electric typewriter – the height of technology in September of ’74…
As my son prepares to return to Colorado College, I have been trying to recall where I did my laundry. I lived in Root my first year? Can anyone help me?
You did it in the basement, down the hall, around the corner and there it was. Easy for me to remember, because my office was down there for two years while KJ was being completed.
Rrecall buying posters in the village and at Bristol, stretching Marimekko fabric on frames to hang on walls of suites. We rearranged modular furniture in all kinds of creative ways, including one in a double that had the desks underneath the beds. One semester, I chipped in with a group to have cases of Coke in green glass bottles delivered (thanks to an idea floated by Joe Shrum H’76). Remember the hot plates- actually cooked in a wok on those.
This thread also reminded me of the assistance offered by our beloved college handyman, “Joe, Man on the Floor”. Anyone know what happened to this kindly soul who repaired everything from plumbing to electrical outlets and often helped us
with flat bicycle tires too?
Laundry was usually in the basement or first floor of each dorm, washer and dryer done with quarters. Sometimes I threw mine in and someone else switched it from washer to dryer or I did it for them. Sort of friendly and right in the dorm buildings.
Does anyone remember the under bed drawers? One year I took out the drawers and put them up at the ends of the bed to raise it up–great view of the Kirkland quad.
Linen service was 2 flat and no fitted sheets, so I convinced my mother to buy 2 sets of regular sheets with fitted bottoms. I figured it was around the same price, and though I had to wash them they were more normal. The weird part was that I had a set of cartoon Road Runner sheets, no idea why.
I though I was way cool because my mother gave me her old IBM Selectric typewriter-the one with the round ball that had the letters on it that spun around as it typed. I was very impressed with myself to have such a great typewriter.
Sophomore year I lived in a suite and we ate off the meal plan. We were very organized with assigned nights as to who cooked, if you cooked you didn’t clean and vice versa, if you had a significant other who ate a lot of meals with us you had to pay more etc. I’ve always been told we were organized because we were girls–bull! we were all just obsessive enough!
It’s been so odd sending 2 sons off to college these past 7 years. I have tried to resist, “when Dad and I went to college”, but haven’t always been able to keep quiet.