Lucky Up-Do #2

Title: Pony Tail

General Information about Item:

  • Ritual
  • English
  • United States

Informant Data:

Summer Martin was born on February 10th, 1999 in Santa Monica, California. Her family currently resides in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. She is a ’21 at Dartmouth studying Biology. She hopes to study and practice medicine after her undergrad. Summer considers herself a fairly superstitious person.

Contextual Data:

  • Social Context
    • The data was collected in person in the Baker-Berry Library. Paul asked Summer if she had any pre-exam superstitions or rituals and gave her a minute to think before responding. Summer says she started putting her hair up in high school because all the girls did that when testing at her school.
  • 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: 
    • Summer has a superstition that she will not do well on an exam unless her hair is put up in a ponytail. She thinks that if her hair is down, she will feel uncomfortable and distracted from doing well on her exam. So, Summer’s ritual is that she always puts her hair into a ponytail. She would never take an exam with her hair down. She started putting her hair up after speaking with one of her freshman fall classmates who also puts her hair up.
  • Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Informant’s Comments:

I think it’s kind of both a superstition and a ritual, but I put my hair up before every exam I that have… I just put it in a pony tail and I just do it because I’ve always done it in high school and stuff and it just turned into a superstition for me… [my hair] has to be up.

Collector’s Name: Miranda Greig

Tags/Keywords: Homeopathic Magic. Ritual. Diffusion.

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