Many feel this way. Although these girls regard the failure of Interim as a failure of personal motivation, there is considerable dissatisfaction with the efforts of the college as well. "To make Interim work, you need interested students. That's the job of the faculty all year long--to get the students interested. They don't do it." In one way or another, these girls felt the regular term-time education was not as effective as it might be. Some argued that the quality of the courses has failed to keep up with the rising academic ability and preparation of the incoming classes. ("Let's face it: what was tough stuff a decade ago is boring as hell to the better prepared kids coming along.")

Others felt that a more productive student-faculty relationship would aid the situation. Smithies do not have close contact with their faculty except in primarily social circumstances; they are likely to regard any professors they know more as benign uncles than as teachers. "We go to see them if we get behind in their course," said one girl. "Of course, we don't go unless they're nice," added another.

The girls seem to prefer working on their own; certainly the Smith faculty is very much available. Everyone agreed that the professors are "always there, and always nice about listening to you," but they felt that it "just never seemed important to see them about anything."

Rigidity

Still other opponents of the Interim session blamed the rigidity of regular coursework, claiming that it contrasted too strongly with the total freedom of Interim. "In Interim, you have three weeks to work on your own. But before and afterward in class, the exact opposite is true: the lectures are simpleminded and the exams and papers are strictly playback. You aren't asked or expected to think for yourself."

Added another, "It just plain isn't very exciting. Hard work, yes. But not exciting. This place has a cafeteria view of education; they just shove the knowledge in front of you and let you take what you want. It is so passive, so uninteresting, so mechanical you want to go nuts, sometimes."

It is strange that the girls complain about the passivity of the teachers ("the Smith faculty has too many informers and not enough stimulators"), for one of the most striking characteristics of the Smith education is the marked passivity of the students. They sit blankly in lecture; large numbers of them knit. ("They don't mind as long as we don't drop the needles.") In seminar groups of less than a dozen, the teacher often has trouble eliciting any response at all, to say nothing of starting up a live-exchange.

The girls are not bothered by their seeming unresponsiveness. "Look," said one, "at Sarah Lawrence they encourage you to say any old thing that comes into your head. Around here, we don't speak unless we have something to say, and we think before we speak. We like to be right about what we say." But another girl put it a different way: "We're scared to be wrong, to look foolish before other people. So rather than say something we're unsure of, we say nothing. The pressures in those little seminars is tremendous, sometimes."

Pressures at Smith are not confined to the classroom; conformity in manners, ideals, and dress is a hallmark of the Smith student. All colleges tend toward an undergraduate uniform, but nowhere is it more widely and carefully adopted than Smith. The well-groomed Smithie is moderate in dress, neither ostentatious nor sloppy; she looks classically well-scrubbed and cheerful in her Pepsodent smile, Pringle sweater, Ship-n'. Shore blouse, and pleated plaid skin. Wool knee socks and brown Bass Weejuns complete the basic picture.

Goals

The girls' eventual goals are no less standardized. The average Smithie wants to get married shortly after graduation, and to have children (two or three) after about three years of marriage. After that, she tends to simply be a good mother, a good and socially helpful (not to say advantageous) wife, and perhaps to take up a career later in life. It is not difficult to see why Smith has been labelled the great finishing school of upper-middle class suburban wives: little imagination is required to envision these girls in fifteen years, still pretty and still smiling, in their car coats and station wagons, driving the kids around town in Stamford, Connecticut or Shaker Heights, Ohio.

As might be expected, the rebels at Smith are rare. Almost everyone eventually succombs to the pressure. The girls live in 34 residence houses which are quite small (the largest has about 80 girls), and rather like sororities. The atmosphere is relaxed, but it is through the small house groupings that the pressure is exerted-pressure so great that distinctions between preppies and public school students, debutants and non-debts, are all but erased. The initial resentment of some freshmen for the pressure ("it's a chummy little hell") disappears and is replaced by an unthinking acceptance of the system.

"You get annoyed sometimes, when you realize people are telling you how to act, how to wear your hair, and what clothes to put on. But most of the time you don't care. I imagine it's the same at any girls' college," said a senior.

The Smith girl's lack of concern for her own individuality may be disconcerting to some, but taken on her own terms it is perfectly understandable. "We are here to get a certain kind of education, and preparation for a certain kind of life," one girl said. "Whether we admit it or not, we consciously came here for that purpose. We are all after much the same things--why shouldn't we act similarly?"

Undoubtedly, Smith girls pay a price in individualism, and in personal flamboyance, for their balance and well-roundedness. By emphasizing diversity, they sacrifice some of the intense intellectual excitement they might have found elsewhere. But one good look at one good Smithie is likely to convince a Cambridge observer that the compromise is unquestionably justified