Sleeping in Dartmouth Gear # 3

Title: Sleeping in Dartmouth Gear #3

General Information about Item:

  • Ritual
  • English
  • United States

Informant Data:

  • Lily Clark was born in Orange County, California, on December 2, 1997. Her father owns a landscaping company and mother her mom is a real estate agent. Lizzie is an American Caucasian, but her family origins are Mexican and English so her background is Central American and Western. She is sophomore at Dartmouth College, studying Economics. Lizzie  participates in the Dartmouth Outing Club and the First Generation Club in her free time

Contextual Data:

  • Social Context
    • The data was collected during a one on one interview in Kresge Library. Lily described a ritual she performs the night before a Dartmouth exam. She described the high stress that exams cause and how this ritual helps her cope with it. She started wearing Dartmouth gear to bed in college because she heard from some of her upperclassmen friends that they wear Dartmouth gear to bed to help cope with the high-stress environment.
  • Cultural Context
    • The cultural context of this folklore reflects the competitive atmosphere of Dartmouth college, where every grade impacts as student’s GPA. Students at an Ivy League do not just try to succeed in their classes, but to outperform their peers. As a result of this high stress environment, students may turn to superstitions or ritual to lessen the pressure.

Item:

  • On the day before every exam, Lily puts on her favorite Dartmouth sweatpants. She bought it at the bookstore her freshman year and thinks it improves her test performance. She received her first 100 on a biology exam when she wore the sweatpants and has worn them for every exam ever since. She believes that wearing the sweatpants to bed will instill in her the collective knowledge of Dartmouth symbolically. She heard about this ritual from her upperclassman teammate who was telling her about how he copes with stressful exams at Dartmouth.

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

Collector’s Comments:

  • Lily explained a ritual that she performs the night before an exam. She told me that she learned of this ritual from an upperclassman teammate of hers so she decided to give it a try by wearing a pair of Dartmouth sweatpants that she bought from the bookstore her freshman year to bed the night before an exam and it worked well for her so she continues to practice this ritual. This is considered folklore since the ritual was passed from Lily’s teammate to Lily.

Collector’s Name: Elizabeth Khusid

Tags/Keywords:

  • Ritual. Contagious Magic. Diffusion.

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