This was DH’s first full academic year, and the letters of this period are markedly more concerned with lectures, reading and essays. DH gives many detailed descriptions of her lecture timetable and the various papers for which she is preparing, as well frequent comments on her lecturers and tutors. She occasionally expresses frustration at the lack of guidance and her slow progress. She notes the different attitudes exhibited by the male undergraduates, who cut lectures and fail to submit essays more often than their female counterparts. She speculates that men get better marks in Tripos because they take the exams more coolly. DH and her friends suffer considerable embarrassment because one woman refuses to observe the convention that Girton students should not appear at lectures with shopping bags, thus presenting an ‘uncollegiate appearance’. DH becomes more involved with debating societies, participating in debates and proposing motions, including the resolution that ‘The more women are in politics the better for the women and the better for the politics’.
She also attempts to persuade like-minded students to set up a Liberal Club at Girton.
At one point she notes with horror that there are only four Liberal dons in Trinity. She and others also attend Union debates.
In October 1901 DH met Ania Abrikossoff, a Russian student at Girton, and the two found that they had similar political sympathies. Ania figures many times in the letters, which contain her accounts of conditions in Russia. See Nov 5, 1901, Jan 1902 and May 26, 1902. Ania and DH devise a plan to raise money for famine relief in Russia, and Ania discusses with DH her hopes for agricultural reform.
There is an account of the official opening of the Chapel on May 23, 1902. DH suggests that the £10,000 spent on it might have been spent more usefully on improved teaching.
The Boer War again figures often in DH’s letters; in April 1902 she comments on the accounts of the concentration camps. The last letter of the academic year coincides with the end of the war, and DH’s expectations for the return of her brother, Michael.