A personal account of Richard Berendzen's life as president of The American University (AU) in Washington, D.C. during the 1983-1984 academic year is presented in diary form. The account describes his interactions with faculty, students, administrators, and people outside the university to further the goals of the institution. In the year prior to the diary entries, enrollments at AU had dropped unexpectedly while tuition had not been raised to make up for the shortfall. There were empty beds of former students who faced economic pressures. A union protested AU's consequent firing of its custodians and its contracting with an independent custodial firm, which employed primarily blacks as custodians. The issue of racism surfaced when students and faculty supported demonstrators. Since AU has no wholly assured flow of applicants or donors, Berendzen recognized that to improve, or even to maintain, the relative position of AU, he had to become not only its pedagogical leader but also a tour guide, architectural visionary, and emissary to the well-to-do in pursuit of resources for the university. The problem of mobilizing resources to build a sports and convocation center is a running theme in the diary. Berendzen uses the metaphor of a suit of armor to refer to his own protection against not only the mild hurts of ungenerosity but also the great stress of threats and physical abuse. (SW)