Joan Dufel Eccard::  My name is Joan Elizabeth Eccard. When I came to Grinnell my maiden name was Dufel, and I currently live in Shallotte, North Carolina. I am a member of the Grinnell College class of 1968.
Joan Dufel Eccard::  I came to Grinnell mainly because of my family’s history with Grinnell. My grandfather had six daughters and all of them came to Grinnell. They grew up in Waterloo, Iowa, and he always wanted a son but only had daughters, but believed that women should be educated. So of course, when it was time for me to go to Grinnell, I applied to one, I think, other college, but Grinnell always had the upper hand. I remember my mother telling me that when she went to Grinnell in the thirties, the tuition was $500 for one year. When I went it was $2500 for one year, and of course now it’s gone up many more times than it did just in those years.
Joan Dufel Eccard::  Unfortunately, I was not well-prepared for life at Grinnell, because I had gone to a small, rural high school. We did not learn how to interpret literature, how to analyze literature. And so it was a big awakening to me to go into a Humanities class where most of the other students had already read the Iliad and the Odyssey, and the books that we were studying, and I had not been exposed to them and did not know how to write.
Joan Dufel Eccard::  Thankfully, I had a very good professor, Professor Debicki, who took me under his wing and taught me how to analyze and how to write. I also had him for my Spanish class, and even though I had had two years of Spanish in high school, of course Spanish moved much more quickly at the college level. But I did take Spanish both years and enjoyed it and my Biology class was also a challenge. I remember my first test, I got a D on it. I’d never gotten a D before. And I went in to speak with Professor Mendoza and he said, “When did you start studying?” and I said “Oh, a couple of days ahead of time.” He said, “No, you start two weeks before the test, and start studying.”
Joan Dufel Eccard::  And our first lab was dissecting a fetal pig. I had never been in a Biology lab before. So, I learned quickly how to jump right in and life was... pretty much revolved around your studying. However, I did also take piano lessons, because I had taken piano all through high school. So, my first semester I was also practicing and taking piano lessons, and I also audited a wonderful music class on Debussy and Ravel. And I remember that to this day I did enjoy that so much.
Joan Dufel Eccard::  Our dorm room was, of course, they’re all small, but we had a corner room that had a closet that kind of went back under the eave, and we had a sink in our room and one of our- My most fun memories is making Jello in the sink. That’s of course just kind of silly but that just seemed like a good thing to do. I knew my roommate before coming to Grinnell, because Cindy Peterson and I had met in High School. We were both from Iowa, different parts of the state, but we had both won a trip to Chicago through 4H to see the Merchandise Mart and the different types of furniture and so forth. So, we met on the train and found out we were both going to Grinnell, so we decided we’d be roommates. And that was so nice because both of us were kind of lost and there was no mentoring system, really. And so it was wonderful to already know at least one person when you came to Grinnell.
Joan Dufel Eccard::  Our curfew, of course, was ten o’clock, which my mother loved. She was all for the in loco parentis. So you had to leave the library so you would get back in time for your ten o’clock curfew... I believe the second year, over Thanksgiving of course, so many students came from distances that after- the Friday after Thanksgiving we had classes. So, even though I lived about an hour and a half from here, I didn’t go home for Thanksgiving that year, and the College had arranged with some of the townspeople to take us- have some of us go to a home for Thanksgiving. So I did that and I met, that day, a nice young man from Korea who had been adopted by a family in Colorado. And then he and I dated for a while and then that was a nice experience.
Joan Dufel Eccard::  Also in our dorm, the first year there was a young lady from Indonesia, Weejee. And so the second year Weejee and I roomed together, and her parents would send her things from Indonesia. One of them was... rice cakes- No, fish- I think they were called fish cakes. They were dried. But, we would heat oil in a popcorn popper and put in these little dried things and they would puff up and you would eat them, and so that was always a fun thing too, to have.
Joan Dufel Eccard::  If you had class during the lunch hour, like classes at 11 and 12, then you missed lunch, so you could go to the kitchen after lunch and get something if you wanted to. Or sometimes I would take toasts from breakfast and leave it in the room and heat up some water and make bouillon and have a little can of pears for lunch. So we kind of improvised as we needed to.
Joan Dufel Eccard::  I did transfer to Drake after two years, so I didn’t graduate from Grinnell. I wanted to be a teacher and that just seemed like the best thing to do, and I was a little bit intimidated by the senior exams and the thesis. It’s funny though, when, years following, I occasionally still have dreams of coming back and finishing at Grinnell. So, the wonderful experience at Grinnell has stuck with me. So, thank you, and I think the students of today are very lucky, and maybe one of my grandchildren will come here.
