Monthly Archives: November 2016

Doc Benton Story

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Title: Doc Benton Story

Informant info:

Campbell Brewer is from Richmond, Virginia, and is in the class of 2019 at Dartmouth College. She is currently undecided on her major. She was interviewed in Hanover, NH on 11/2/16. She went on the Hiking 1 trip during her first-year trips.

General Informaion:

  • Verbal: legend; Customary: Prank
  • English
  • U.S.

Social / Cultural Context:

Heard at Moosilauke Ravine Lodge during the final part of first-year trips.

Item:

This is a story that is told at the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge on the last night of first-year trips. The story involves a man that lives alone in the woods and is responsible for mysterious deaths around the town he lived in. It is a scary story that is told to the Freshmen as a prank to scare them on the last night of their trip.

Transcript:

“After a long few days on our trip, we were all excited to be at the lodj with the rest of the freshmen on our trip section. After dinner, they had us all sit on the grassy hill outside of the lodj. The story was pretty long and I heard it more than a year ago, so I may not remember all the details. From what I remember, the story went like this: There was a very smart boy that lived in the area by the lodj and the rest of the people in the town joined together in order to send him to medical school so he could return and be the doctor for the town. While Doc Benton was away studying, he met a scientist, or fellow doctor, I’m not really sure. When Doc Benton came back home, he helped the townspeople with medical issues. His wife died and after that, he was never seen around town and kept to himself. Once he disappeared, a bunch of animals started showing up dead with a red dot on their forehead. After that, a farmer’s daughter went missing and they found her on top of a cliff with Doc Benton. He threw her off the cliff and when they found her body, she had the same red dot on her forehead. That is all I remember but it definitely freaked me out.”

Informant’s comments:

“After hearing the story and being completely freaked out, I think the main purpose of the story is to prank and scare the Freshmen as a source of entertainment.

Collector’s comments:

I agree with Campbell in that the main purpose of the story is to entertain and scare the freshmen on their trip. However, I think there is also a sense of tradition within the community of first-year trips that is the reason for why it is told every year

Collector’s name: Will Randell

Tags/Keywords:  Doc Benton, Legend, Scary story, prank, the lodi, moosilauke, trips

Yermis

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Title: Yermis

General Information about Item:

  • Genre and Sub Genre
    • Customary folklore: Childhood folklore game
  • Language: Spanish
  • Country where Item is from: Colombia

Informant Data:

Carlos Quintero was born in Cali, Colombia on February 18, 1968. He was born to two Colombian parents and grew up in Colombia. He lived in Colombia until 1993 when he began working on cruise ships and then moved to Maryland, USA, where he currently resides, in 1994.

Contextual Data:

Carlos grew up in Colombia to Colombian parents, so he was completely immersed in the Colombian culture. As a young boy, Carlos would spend a lot of his time outside playing with other children. One of the most common games played in Colombia by children is Yermis. It is a really unique game to Colombia. Carlos played Yermis mutiple times as a child and continues to see children playing it in Colombia today.

Item:

Yermis is a game where there are 2 teams with about 5 to 10 people each. One team is the attacking team and the other is the defending team. The attacking team has to roll a ball towards a stack of bottle caps. Once the bottle caps are knocked down, the defending team has to try to build the stack back up and the attacking team has to prevent them from doing that by hitting members of the defending team with the ball. Once a defender is hit with the ball, they are out and can no longer play. The game ends when either the attacking team hits all of the members of the defending team or the defending team is able to build the stack of bottle caps back up. If the defending team succeeds, they yell “¡Yermis!” to symbolize that they have won.

Informant’s Comments:

Carlos notes that Yermis was mostly played in parks or on the streets and that it was mostly played by children from the lower classes. He also mentioned that when he goes back to Colombia he no longer sees as many children playing Yermis as when he was a child. He credits this to the advances in technology and how children are more attracted to video/computer games. He finds it to be a shame because Yermis is a real community and family game that brings a lot of people together and now that is not really happening anymore.

Collector’s Comments:

I noticed that the simplicity of Yermis really facilitates it to be a game common to the street and to the lower classes. Bottle caps can be found pretty much anymore as well as a single ball. These are easily accessible items to everyone and allows for Yermis to played by anyone, regardless of class.

Collector’s Name: Chris Quintero

Tags/Keywords:

  • Game, Colombian folklore, Colombia, Colombian

The Art of Networking

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Genre and Sub Genre: Customary Folklore: Implicit Etiquette

Language: English

Country where Item is from: United States of America

Informant Data: Angela Cai is a government major in the class of 2017 at Dartmouth. She is from Dover, Massachusetts, where her mom is a professor and her dad works in  software engineering.  Angela has participated in formal recruiting twice at Dartmouth. She is a member of Kappa Delta sorority, is an undergraduate UGA in McGlaughlin, and she participates in the Women in Business club.

Social/ Cultural Context: Angela was interviewed, one-on-one, in a common space on campus. Angela has gone through the process of formal corporate recruiting at Dartmouth twice, and when interviewed was interviewed just after completing her recruiting this term.  Networking is a buzzword surrounding corporate recruiting, and it often consists of conversations following a generic structure in order for prospective hires to evaluate a firm and for recruiters to review potential candidates.

Item: The actual act of going to networking events and having conversations intended to help build your network is guided by lots of implicit etiquette and customary folklore. Networking conversations are not normal every day conversations, they require preparation. Angela prepped for her networking events through her Women in Business network, and when at networking events she found that there are more barriers to conversation because both sides have goals, and you have to be conscious of the recruiter’s time and do your best to be professional, beginning each conversation with a handshake.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file): 

Transcript of Associated File:

What kind of etiquette do you think that you use when you’re networking? I think in general I try ot be conscious of people’s time and also do my best to be professional. So, in terms of reaching out to people just like, first try to make that connection in as professional way as possible.

What were info sessions like for you, if you went? They were rough. It’s kind of overwhelming to get a lot of information thrown at you, and a little bit overwhelming that all of them sound essentially the same thing within the same industry across companies. Having groups of people like surrounding professionals and trying to like get to know them, its kind of hard to have a real, or normal conversation, face to face.

How do you think these kinds of conversations differ from regular conversations? Well I feel like there are more barriers to open conversation in networking conversation because both sides have goals, and from a recruiter’s perspective or from like a professionals perspective, they’re just there to try to find the best people who might be fit for the role or like to try to tell people about the company. But from your perspective, there’s kind of the underlying tensions because you’re probably there because you want an internship or a job.

 Informant’s Comments: Corporate recruiting takes up a lot of time and energy, but ultimately it was helpful for her.

Collector’s Comments: Informant is able to give a detailed and experience driven commentary on recruiting after going through the process not once but twice over the part two years at Dartmouth.

Collector’s Name: Bridget Dougherty

Tags/Keywords: Networking, Customary Lore, Implicit Etiquette

‘Stretching the Truth’ on Resumes

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Genre and Sub Genre: Verbal Folklore: Horror Stories

Language: English

Country where Item is from: United States of America

Informant Data: Ziqin Yuan is a government major in the class of 2018 at Dartmouth. She is from New Jersey, where her mom is a scientific researcher and her dad is a computer programmer. Ziqin participated in formal recruiting during her sophomore summer. She is planning to potentially work in education or the corporate/law world after college. Ziqin is a member of Kappa Delta sorority and is a student coordinator for OPAL.

Social/ Cultural Context: Ziqin was interviewed by Bridget, one-on-one, in a classroom at Dartmouth. Ziqin has gone through the process of formal corporate recruitng at Dartmouth once, and when interviewed was still in the midst of interviewing for winter positions. Resumes are vital to the recruitment process, and it is a big faux-pas to lie on resumes, and this can often lead to offers being rescinded or a candidate failing to advance in the interview process.

Item: During recruitment, every participant is required to construct a personal resume listing their achievement in order to be evaluated by firms. Generally, a resume paired with a cover letter is submitted for review by the “resume drop” deadline, and a week afterwards, candidates are notified which firms they received interviews from based on this submission. Resumes are based on an honor system, and often in interviews the interviewer will ask questions about the resume in order to ensure that it is all true. Ziqin had taken a computer science class that focused on a code called “python” so she listed “python” under her skills on her resume, but she could not recall all of the specifics of the code. Unfortunately, her interviewer asked her multiple questions about the code, and even though it was a phone interview and she was trying to research answers, she gave an incorrect response regarding the code. This would appear as a red flag to the interviewer because she was not able to back up the skills she claimed to have on her resume. Ziqin has shared this story with many friends in order to warn them about the consequences that come from lying on resume. Stories such as this have been passed between students undergoing the recruitment process in order to warn future students and keep them from making similar mistakes.

Associated file: 

Transcript of Associated File:

Do you have any anecdotes about your experience, or any horror stories? I had this awful interview… he like asked me questions such as, he really grilled me on my resume, so like I guess it was just like a personal story that really scared me. I put that I knew python on my resume ‘cause I took CS1, and he asked me about my favorite object, and I didn’t know what that was. So I was like googling, because it was a phone interview and I ended up saying was a “four loop,” which I asked Emma [CS major] about and apparently four loops aren’t objects. And I also described it wrong.

Informant’s Comments: Informant was able to laugh about this incident now, but definitely remembered this particular interview as being really unpleasant.

Collector’s Comments: Informant’s perspective is really fresh on corporate recruiting because she has done most of it, and is even still going through it.

Collector’s Name: Bridget Dougherty

Tags/Keywords: Horror Stories, Verbal Lore, Resume

 

The Title of Suu

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Title: “Suu”

General Information about Item:

  • Customary Folklore
    • Ritural/Tradition
  • English
  • USA

Informant Data:

  • Max Parker is a 21 year old Senior male at Dartmouth College studying economics and computer science.  Max is from Menlo Park California.  He has played rugby for four years.  

Contextual Data:

  • Rugby coaches are often yelling out and communicating with players while they are on the field during practices as well as games.  When two players have the same name, it can create confusion on the field when the coach is ony trying to call out to one of them.  As a result, the Dartmouth Rugby Club has created an interesting tradition for diferentiating a pair of players with the same name.

Item:

  • On the team, Max is referred to by the name “Suu.”  The name Suu is a bit of rugby folklore that has been part of the team for around 15 years.  At a given point in time, there is always someone in the club referred to by the name Suu. This name is passed down generation to generation when the rugby player holding to title of Suu graduates.  This name was brought about to differentiate players on the field when there are two players, often who play similar positions, that have the same name.  One of these two players with the same name is dubbed Suu, thereby eliminating some confusion on the field.  Max is referred to as Suu by some people not on the rugby team as well, as the name has taken on a life of its own outside of the rugby club.  Max is planning on passing the name Suu down to Patrick O’Neil when he graduates.  There are two players on the team, both freshman, named Patrick.  Another interesting fact about Max is that he is the President of the Club.  This position is given to a junior the Spring before their senior year.  The players nominate certain members of the club for this position, and then debate who should be given the position and vote on this decision while those up for the position are not in the room.  

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Transcript of Associated File:

  • Max Gomez: Alright, Max, could you tell me a little bit about yourself, name age where you are from? Give us a little background
  • Max Parker: Yeah, My name is max parker, I am a senior at Dartmouth college, from California, Grew up in Menlo Park which is about 45 minutes south  of San Francisco.  Went to Menlo High School, and am now at Dartmouth Studying computer science and economics and playing rugby
  • MG: And how long have you played rugby?
  • MP: Uh this is my fourth year, started when I was a freshman.
  • MG: Very cool, it is my understanding that you have a nickname on the rugby team, could you tell me about that name, how you got it and what it means?
  • MP: So, My nickname on the rugby team is is Suu, (to interupting friend who walks in), I’m in an interview right now, alright anyways, my name on the rugby team is Suu, not spelled S-u-e spelled S-u-u, and the tradition of it is back in 2002 I think, when would that have been? Yeah back in 2002, Alex Magleby was coaching the rugby team and there were two kids on the team named Matt who were in the same class and played similar positions, so they would always be on the field in similar places together. And, the coach got pissed at saying Matt and having them both respond, so he decided that one of them would go by the name of Suu at practice, just to differentiate them. And when they became seniors, they were two freshman on the team in the class of 2005 that had the same name, so the guy named suu decided to pass it down to one of the freshman, and five iterations later, Tyler Muragne, who is a ’14, passed the name down to me.
  • MG: Cause there was another man named Max on the Team?
  • MP: Yeah, Even though he wasn’t in my grade, Max Hannam, he was a year older but played the same position.
  • MG: Very intersting, how many people call you Suu? Is it common for you to be referred to as Suu?
  • MP: Yeah among guys, everyone on the rugby team, most of the guys in AD, and that’s pretty much it.  There are some people outside of that who sorta caught on, but most other people on campus call me Max.
  • MG: are you planning on passing the name down when you graduate?
  • MP: I am, yes.
  • MG: And to whom.
  • MP: To Pat O’Niel
  • MG: Insider information
  • MP: yes insider information, omit that from the record.

Informant’s Comments:

  • NA

Collector’s Comments:

  • This is a clear description of an interesting bit of customory folklore that has been in the Club for some time, passed down from player to player.

Collector’s Name: Max Gomez

Tags/Keywords:

  • Suu
  • Name
  • Rugby

Corporate Recruiting as a ‘Rite of Passage’

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Genre and Sub Genre: Rites of Passage

Language: English

Country where Item is from: United States of America

Informant Data: Emily Ma is a Biology and Economics double major in the class of 2018 at Dartmouth. She is from North Potomac, Maryland, where her mom is an eye doctor and her dad is a scientific researcher.  Emily has participated in formal recruiting twice at Dartmouth. After college Emily aims to work in healthcare consulting and eventually go to med school.  She is a member of Kappa Delta sorority, is a Design Editor for the Dartmouth Business Journal, and she serves on the Red Cross Club executive team.

Social/ Cultural Context: Emily was interviewed, one-on-one, in a common space on campus.  She has gone through the process of formal corporate recruiting at Dartmouth twice, and when interviewed was interviewed just after completing her recruiting this term. The corporate recruiting process is highly structured and often represents the bridge between student life and the “real world,” thus serving as a rite of passage for these students.

Item: For econ majors working to ultimately go into consulting, finance or technology, corporate recruiting is a rite of passage. It is the process by which students are separated from their peers and their classes, are tested, taught, and ultimately exposed to the real world of searching for a job.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Transcript of Associated File:

Do you feel like doing Corporate Recruiting has changed your Dartmouth experience? Would you consider it a rite of passage? Yeah, for econ majors and those looking to go into consulting or finance and possibly tech.

Why do you think that? Because it is sort of like a gateway to the quote unquote real world, in the sense that you get exposed to a lot of processes and procedures that adults do in the real world when looking for a job, that you otherwise wouldn’t really be exposed to when you’re on campus.

Informant’s Comments: n/a

Collector’s Comments: Informant is able to give a detailed and experience driven commentary on recruiting after going through the process not once but twice over the past six months. Given that she has completed at least one round fully, I feel that she is well qualified to speak to the process as it pertains to rites of passage.

Collector’s Name: Bridget Dougherty

Tags/Keywords: Corporate Recruiting, Rite of Passage

Spanish New Year’s Grape Tradition

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Title: Spanish New Year’s Grape Tradition

General Information about Item:

  • Genre and Sub Genre
    • Customary folklore: Childhood holiday folklore
  • Language: Spanish
  • Country where Item is from: Colombia

Informant Data:

Stephanie Quintero was born in Takoma Park, Maryland on March 24, 1998.  She is 18 years old and has an older brother. She graduated from St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in Potomac, Maryland and is currently a freshman at Dartmouth College.

Contextual Data:

Stephanie was born to two Colombian parents who immigrated to the U.S. She gained a lot of exposure to Colombian culture through her parents, who taught her Spanish from an early age. She also learned many of the traditions and customs of Colombian culture. One of these is the Spanish New Year’s Grape Tradition. Her parents taught her this tradition from an early age and she actively participated in it while she was a child.

Item:

There is a classic Spanish tradition of eating grapes as soon as it becomes the new year. 12 grapes, representing each month in the year, would be eaten and after each one is eaten there would need to be a wish made otherwise you would have bad luck.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Transcript of Associated File:

Stephanie: In Colombia there is this tradition on New Year’s that the children eat 12 grapes and for each grape it’s one wish and if they don’t make one wish for each grape then it will be bad luck for them.

Chris: Who usually does this tradition?

Stephanie: It is usually all over Latin America, but in Colombia specifically it is just for children.

Informant’s Comments:

Stephanie noted that she participated in this tradition consistently when she was a child, but realized that as she got older she found herself not always doing it. She is not sure why that happened. However, she thinks that it is because as she grew up she realized that wishes do not always come true and found that the tradition no longer really served a purpose.

Collector’s Comments:

Stephanie’s experience is not entirely unique. Many children across Colombia grow up and end up no longer participating in the tradition. The tradition is largely seen as childish and many adults are ridiculed if they particiapte.

Collector’s Name: Chris Quintero

Tags/Keywords:

  • Tradition, Superstition, Spanish folklore, Colombia, Colombian

Two-Faced Interviewer

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Title: Two-Faced Interviewer

General Information about Item:

  • Verbal Folklore
  • English
  • Country where Item is from: US

Informant Data:

  • Andrew Wolff is a junior at Dartmouth College and a Quantatative Social Science major from New Jersey. His mother is a  college advisor and his father a sales representative for medical journals. He is a brother in the Alpha Chi fraternity, is involved in TAMID, a Dartmouth consulting group for Israeli start-ups, and organized the Dartmouth Model UN Conference. He is currently planning on joining a consulting firm after graduation, and became involved in corporate recruiting during his Sophmore Summer after hearing about it from his brothers at Alpha Chi.

Contextual Data: 

  • Cultural Context: Corporate recruiting has a stress-interview component, where candidates are expected to respond to difficult questions under stressful conditions to test how well people stand up to high-pressure environments. How these stressful conditions are created varies from interview to interview.

Item:

  • This was a personal horror story that Andrew later shared with his fraternity brothers after the experience. In a first-round interview, the interviewer approached the candidates and seemed very kind and nice, but the minute the interview started, he did a complete about-face and became very argumentative and combative, picking apart every answer that Andrew gave. As a result of the bad interview experience, after the interview was over, Andrew reworked his company preference order to remove that company from his top position, only to find out later by the same inteviewer that Andrew did very well in the interview and would have been given the job if the priority order had been left alone.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Transcript of Associated File:

  • “In a first round, there was a guy who was really nice when he first walked in, and then we start the interview and he just got like really really mean, just like challenging everything I said, like making it seem like I wasn’t communicating my ideas effectively, like ‘I’m asking you about a time when you were challenged by a different opinion and you keep skipping over the difficult parts. I need you to go back and outline, you’re not giving me what we’re looking for.’ And during the case, he was really combative with my answers, he would just be like after everything I say, just be like ‘so, is that all? are you sure that’s what you want to do?’ And then as soon as the case was over, he just like switched again into this nice dude, and he actually rattled me enough that I, um, and I knew which office he was from that after that interview, and my second round interview, which went… my second first round interview, which went a lot better I switched the preferences of my office. But it turned out that the guy was the one who actually called me to give me the final round, and told me that he was sorry that I switched my preferences because you did a great job, and I was like you could have been a little bit nicer.”

Informant’s Comments:

  • This is one of Andrew’s main horror stories he shares with other people going through the corporate recruiting process.

Collector’s Comments:

  • The stress interview itself may not be folklore, since it is a formalized part of the actual interview process, but in Andrew’s telling this personal experience repeatedly to other people as both a funny horror story and a word of caution against too readily reacting to what you think was a bad interview, it becomes a part of the verbal folklore surrounding corporate recruiting.

Collector’s Name: Aime Joo

Tags/Keywords:

  • Corporate Recruiting Folklore, Stress Interviews, Verbal Folklore, Horror Stories

Class Photo in Front of Dartmouth Hall

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Title: Class Photo in Front of Dartmouth Hall

General Information about Item:

  • Genre: Customary Folklore: Ritual
  • Language: English
  • Country where Item is from: USA

Informant Data:

Current Freshman at Dartmouth who actually participated in this ritual in the beginning of the fall. Jack is currently 19 years of age and he is a student-athlete.

Contextual Data:

There is an annual ritual for the freshman class to take a class picture during matriculation. This picture takes place in front of Dartmouth Hall. At the end of the picture, it has been a ritual for every student to run from Dartmouth Hall to the cafeteria for as extravagant lobster dinner. This dinner is provided for the freshman to welcome them into school. Although this ritual of running to the cafeteria after taking the picture is not spoken of, it is taboo, as every freshman knows that not running to the cafeteria will result in possibly missing the lobster dinner.

Item:

“Before meeting at Dartmouth Hall to take the class picture, I remember hearing older kids talk about how I needed to sprint to the cafeteria after. I dressed up for the occasion, along with my friends. We went to Dartmouth Hall and took the picture with our freshman class. Literally the second after the camera flashed, every single freshman there took off in a sprint across the green to FOCO (the cafeteria). It was pretty funny because everyone there knew they would be able to get dinner, but everyone was running like their life depended on it. It was a lot of fun, and definitely a part of my matriculation that I will always remember. I plan on telling the freshmen next year that they better sprint after taking the picture in front of Dartmouth Hall if they want to eat any lobster.” 

Informant’s Comments:

Upon completing the interview, Jack Richardson, commented on how vividly he remembered the experience. He then referenced how it was no doubt a ritual that he viewed as a necessary introduction into Dartmouth College.

Collector’s Comments:

As Jack was reviewing his experience of taking his class photo in front of Dartmouth Hall, and then sprinting across the green to get a nice lobster dinner it made me remember the ritual. I remember how much fun it was to take part in the ritual alongside some kids I didn’t know, who are now some of my closest friends.

Collector’s Name: John McCormick

Tags/Keywords:

  • Customary Lore, Ritual

Serenade

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Title: Serenading the Bride

General Information about Item:

  • Customary Folklore
  • Italian, English
  • Italy

Informant Data:

  • Gerardo Pisacane is a thirty-year-old male from the south of Italy in the Amalfi Coast, a place near Naples. He lived in Vietri Sul Mare (the first village of the Amalfi coast) from his birth until he turned twenty-three years old. At that point, he moved to Milan for six years and now lives in Hanover. He currently works at Dartmouth as the resident advisor for the Italian language program, exposing American students to Italian language and culture. Coming from the south of Italy, Gerardo has been to many weddings, particularly because he comes from a large family. In December, he even participated in his cousin’s wedding as the best man.

Contextual Data:

  • Social/Cultural Context: In Italy, it is customary that the groom, if he chooses, serenade the bride the day prior to the wedding so as to demonstrate his love for her.

Item:

  • The groom sings to the bride the night before their wedding day.

Media File:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3D8k-ua7FY

Transcript of Associated File:

  • Informant: “The first, uh, the day before the wedding- the… not the bride, but the other one: the groom – groom – the groom! (Okay, I learn a new word!) The groom uh sings a song uh to the bride. Do you know the meaning of a seranata?
  • Collector: “A sere- a serenade!”
  • Informant: “A serenade? Ok. For example, my cousin did that the day before and the -the bride didn’t know that and so she was so surprised!”
  • Collector: “And why would they do that?”
  • Informant: “It is a kind of – a romantic – romantic thing- to prove his love for her… to stress to show his love for her.”

Informant’s Comments:

This practice is often dependent on the groom’s volition: some grooms are too shy to sing to their future wives.

Collector’s Comments:

  • This practice is an example of customary folklore, for it represents a typical custom tied to Italian weddings. The husband’s song of love is representative of the happiness that the couple will have.

 

Collector’s Name: Isabella Florissi

Tags/Keywords:

  • Customary folklore