Tag Archives: Circle of Life

5:45 am Wake-up

Title: 5:45 am Wake-up

General Information about Item:

  • Customary Folklore: Tradition, Song
  • Language: English
  • Country where Item is from: USA

Informant Data:

Ethan Isaacson lives in Lexington, Massachusetts, and is currently a student at Dartmouth in the class of 2018. He was born on January 5th, 1996, and is studying chemistry and physics. He went on freshman trips when he was an incoming freshman, was a trip leader his sophomore year, and was on Hanover Croo, known as HCroo, this past fall, so has seen many different aspects of the trips program.

Leigh Steinberg was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was born on April 19, 1996. She is a student at Dartmouth in the class of 2018 and is a history major and plans on going into consulting after graduation. She was a trip leader before her sophomore year of college and was on Hanover Croo, known as HCroo, this past fall.

Contextual Data:

At 5:45 am, HCroo wakes up all the trippees and trip leaders in a loud and fun manner. It is experienced by everyone, and serves to bring the freshman closer together.

Item:

The first night of trips is spent in the Levronne field house. The next morning, everybody is woken up at 5:45 am to the song, Circle of Life, from the Lion King. HCroo is wearing onesies and flair and runs all around the field house to wake everybody up and get people moving quickly. Once this song ends, they then play other morning songs like Good Morning Baltimore. They are supposed to help people get moving in the morning and provide a fun way to start the morning before being sent to the woods for four days.

Transcript of Informant Interview:

We wake them up to the Circle of Life from the Lion King. It’s like again, everything on trips is crazier than the version of it in real life. So we tell them we are going to wake them up at 5:45, which they already are unhappy about, that’s the one thing we don’t lie to them about. And then when we wake them up, we are all wearing onesies or other animal costumes and we start blasting Circle of Life and go running to their faces. There’s a morning medley, so like Good Morning Baltimore and other morning songs. Like we would play certain songs if we really needed them to get the fuck out. I would say a lot of HCroo is centered around trying to herd cats in the nicest way possible while also trying to be fun.

Informant’s Comments:

The wake up serves a practical purpose on top of trying to be fun, as they need the trippees to get moving early. They need to be crazy to motivate students to move faster in the morning.

Collector’s Comments:

I remember being so tired the morning of my trip, but the fun wake-up made the morning much better.

Collector’s Name: Henry Senkfor

Tags/Keywords:

  • Trips, DOC, morning, Circle of Life, morning, wake-up