The High School Boy and His Problems/Going to College
I am convinced that far too many boys go to college. It is not that I undervalue the worth of a college education—far from it—but too many fellows go who have no appreciation of what a college education means, no special interest, no impelling motive, no desire for what college gives. When I entered college, it was a great event in our country community for a boy to break away from his environment and go off to a higher institution of learning; the neighbors all turned out to see me off. Now everybody goes; it is as common a thing for a boy to go to college as it is for him to take a summer vacation. I often ask the young fellows in our freshman class who come in to see me why they are in college, but I seldom get a very thoughtful or a very specific answer.
I asked Parker the other day. He is a boy of good brains and attractive physique. He has plenty of money, and every chance to do well, but his work is ragged and commonplace, he gets no pleasure out of books, he has no enthusiasm for study; he is quite as likely to fail as to pass when the test of final examinations comes.
"It wasn't because I wanted to come," was his reply. "My brother George finished here two years ago, and he wanted me to come. Father would have been disappointed if I had not done so, so what was I to do?"
He showed about as much animation and pleasure as a young fellow might do who was taking a dose of cod liver oil to please his grandmother.
Down the street a block or so was another boy to whom his college course is a source of constant joy. He has been an orphan for many years, he has no resources but those which come from the labor of his own hands. Ever since he was a small boy he had looked forward to being in college as one of the hoped-for but nearly impossible things. It was to him like a dream of fairy-land not likely to come true.
He worked his way through high school, he got a good job the following summer, he won a scholarship by examination, and then he began to feel that possibly his dream might be realized. He is in college now, and he finds it all a delight. He has no money and few pleasures, but he is full of enthusiasm, he laughs at the sacrifices he must make, he counts it a privilege to be able to pursue the subjects which he enjoys, and he knows very well why he came to college. His four years in college will be full of hard toil, but they will bring him constant and keen pleasure.
Too many boys go to college for the same reason that scores of fellows went into the army in 1917—it is the easiest thing to do; it is the thing which a large number of his friends are doing. To others it seems more attractive, perhaps, and more likely to result in a hilariously good time than going to work. There is a generally accepted belief extant, also, that the man who goes to college is likely in some way to have an easier time than the fellow who does not do so. No one seems to appreciate the fact that the man who secures an education is also sure to fall heir to pretty heavy responsibilities.
Now why should a boy go to college? Not to any large extent because other fellows are doing so, though of course, custom is not a thing to be wholly ignored even in following educational practices; not so much as most people think to acquire information or to acquaint oneself with facts, though the accumulation of facts is a necessary detail in any system of education. More than for anything else, one should go to college for the symmetrical training of the mind, for the learning of self-control, for the disciplining of all the faculties, for the development of ideals.
I studied calculus and conic sections while I was in college; I pored over Anglo Saxon texts, and spent a considerable time in the chemical laboratory working out experiments and developing formulas. Most of these things I have forgotten, and few if any of them have I had any occasion to use in the routine business which has engaged my attention since I left college. I do not for this reason, however, in any way underestimate the permanent value of these subjects to me. They developed my brain, they caused me to think, they helped me to draw conclusions quickly and gave me a broader and clearer outlook on life, and these powers have helped me every day of my life since, in every relation which I have borne to my fellow men. It is seldom that I have needed the specific information which I derived from these subjects, but all through the years I have depended upon the training which I thus received. It is this training and discipline which in my mind is the most valuable thing the college gives.
There are several sorts of men who should not go to college. The man who does not like to study, who finds no real pleasure in books, to whom the incidental things of college are the main consideration, has little business in college. I was talking to Rogers about his work this quarter. He is doing poorly, he can not get up in the morning, he finds class attendance irksome, and books and study bore him.
"If I can not make the ball team," he confessed to me, "there is little use of my staying in college. I'd a lot rather hold down the second sack than be elected to Phi Beta Kappa."
The facts are, however, that there's a slim chance of his attaining either distinction, for he will not be allowed to play ball at all if he doesn't carry his studies, and the likelihood of his making Phi Beta Kappa is about as remote as the establishment of an aëroplane route to Mars.
"You'd better apply for admission to one of the minor leagues," I advised him, "college is no place for you."
There are those who look upon college as a kind of resting place between youth and manhood where one forms associations only, or absorbs a few facts or a little culture. They do not for a moment consider it a place where a young fellow should get down to business and work hard, but rather a place of leisure, or recreation, a place to dream and smoke, and sleep late in the morning, and talk nonsense to pretty girls while one is waiting for the real work of life to begin. It is this sort of man who yawns or turns up his nose when the subject of scholarship is introduced. He doesn't want to get high grades, not he. He is going to have to go to work quite soon enough, he declares, so why spoil the best years of one's life by digging.
Peters was that sort. He could prove by statistics gathered from all kinds of, to him at least, reliable sources that the commonplace man in his studies in college always develops later into a captain of finance or a world leader. He spent most of his time cultivating an effective shot at billiards or sitting in front of the fire smoking cigarettes and outlining to the other fellows who would listen to him the business and social conquests he expected to make when his college career should close. Unfortunately it closed somewhat sooner than he anticipated, for the faculty took another view of things than that held by Peters, and dropped him at the end of his sophomore year for poor scholarship. Peters is only one of the many illustrations I have known of the fact that there isn't much place in college for the loafer, or for the man who is trying only to pick up a little social experience or to acquire a little intellectual polish without labor, before he gets into the real hustle of life.
There are a few boys undoubtedly who finish high school whose mental equipment is not quite adequate to the work of college, who are not natural students, who are better fitted for a trade than for a profession, and who would seldom have had their minds turned toward a college course were it not for the fact that so many of their mates were continuing their education beyond the high school. The number of these is not large, possibly, but it is sufficiently in evidence for a boy seriously to ask himself the question, "Am I mentally fitted to take up a college course?"
A good many boys can not afford to go to college. Sometimes home duties are arduous and can not be shirked, and though, if he followed his own personal desires, he would go on with his education, he realizes that he is under obligation to make the sacrifice. Sometimes the boy could get away, but there is no money available. The old theory was that any boy who had the desire for an education could always meet his college expenses in some way through manual labor. In fact there are many otherwise sensible people still who imagine that the self-supporting student in college is not only better off than other boys but'is always near the head of the class. I have even known fathers who were quite able to pay the expenses of their sons in college who refused to do so because they exaggerated and idealized the intellectual advantages of being poor. There is always to substantiate their theory, the story of Webster setting off to Dartmouth with his one pair of homespun trousers—later ruined by the rain—and a bag of potatoes for his subsistence. They do not suspect how much pain and suffering he would have been spared, how much better he might have done, had he been properly clothed and decently fed.
The real facts are that the self-supporting student in college misses a tremendous lot usually of what one should get from college, and in a good many instances fails entirely.
"I know absolutely nothing of what real college life is," a junior said to me only a few days ago. "I've earned my own living ever since I entered, and I've had my nose on the grindstone ever since I struck the campus. I sometimes wonder if it pays."
Such a student picks up an inadequate living, and he sometimes falls down on his final examinations. The reason is perfectly evident. The college course, if it is well carried, requires the most of a man's time. The self-supporting student is attempting two tasks either of which have ordinarily been considered sufficient to occupy a man's whole time and energy.
There is also extant another notion to the effect that in a college town it is easier to live on nothing or to pick up a good job than in any other place. Many a young fellow gravitates to a college town thinking he can get work there more readily than in any other place. Quite the contrary is true. The average college town is the most expensive place to live one can find, and the fact that there are always hundreds of young fellows hunting for something to do to eke out an inadequate income, makes the opportunity for lucrative employment quite uncertain.
There are men, of course, in every college who earn all their living and who do well in their studies, but their number is small. Such men usually have some peculiar talent, such as the ability to play a musical instrument well, for instance, which enables them to earn a considerable amount of money in brief periods of time. I have spoken to a boy since I began to write this article who is earning his expenses through college, and he tells me that during the past week he has earned $39.00 by playing the piano in an orchestra for four evenings. There are not many like him, however.
The man who works his way in college must have concentration and a quick, alert mind which will enable him to get his lessons in a short time. He must be resourceful, and let his head help his hands in earning his living. He must be physically strong and robust, for often he will need to get on for a time on less sleep than the average man, or his sleeping hours, at least, will be interrupted or irregular. He will have to be capable of sacrifice, for the man without money can have few of the social pleasures which fill so much of the leisure time of the college man. He can never afford to be an athlete, for participation in athletics will take up all his leisure time and leave him no opportunity to earn his living. He should not be too sensitive or given to despondent spells, for his work will not always be pleasant or to his liking. He will often have to wait on his inferiors and say nothing when they treat him with condescension. I should never advise a boy to attempt to earn his living in college if he does not have to do so; often I think it is better to delay entrance to college until a respectable sum has been saved, and sometimes I am sure it is better not to go to college at all than to make the sacrifices and to do the worse than commonplace work which many self-supporting students find it impossible to avoid. I should rather enter college at twenty-two and do good work than to graduate at the same age and leave behind me a record that was not to my credit.
The boy who is always looking for practical things, who does not want to study anything that fails to reveal at once its practical application or its immediate availability as a money getter, is better off usually out of college than in. I see such men every day. They are never able to "see any use" in Latin, or philosophy, or literature; they are constantly objecting because certain courses in which they are-registered are not what they thought they would be; they are not getting anything out of them, they say, quite likely because they are putting less into them themselves. Such men see very little in a college course, and for them in fact there probably is little, for though the college man is very likely to earn money more readily because of his college training than other men, the fellow who goes to college solely because he thinks it will prove the readiest means to an easy and profitable job, might better stay at home.
The choice of a college is a subject which should be given some attention. The question is one often decided by sentiment, by prejudice, from practical considerations and from a thousand and one things sometimes trifling in themselves. The boy who goes to college in his home town is usually making a mistake. The only advantage such a young fellow derives is a financial one. It is generally cheaper to live at home than away from home, and, when the matter of finances is a vital one, it is better for a boy to go to college in his home town than not to go at all. I have never, except for financial reasons, advised any parents to move to a college town in order that they might look after and care for their sons while they were undergraduates in college, and I do not now recall the names of any sons who were strengthened by having their parents with them during the college course.
The boy living at home is usually less independent, less aggressive, possesses less initiative than the one who is thrown out upon his own resources to fight his own battles, to meet his own temptations, and to settle his own difficulties. The college practically always throws about him sufficient restraint to keep him from going on the rocks, and yet leaves him free enough to develop independence. If he is at home, his father, or especially his mother, undertakes to decide for him in most critical emergencies and, though the judgment of the older person is likely to be more dependable than that of the younger, there is no training for the boy in depending upon his elders' judgment.
The boy from the west will often gain an advantage by going to an eastern institution for his education. Not that he will be better taught there, or live in a more refined or a rarer intellectual atmosphere, but because he will meet different sorts of people, he will need to adjust himself to quite different conditions from those to which he has been used, and he will get a broader outlook upon life. Such an experience will not be at all likely to make him dissatisfied with his own particular part of the country, but on the contrary will cause him to value it more highly. When I go to the mountains I always come back to the prairies with a sense of joy and satisfaction.
For this reason the New Englander or the Southerner would often be immeasurably benefited by taking his college training in the west. It would modify his provincialism, it would disabuse his mind of the idea that the most of the United States lies east of the Hudson river or south of Mason and Dixon's line, it would humanize him and teach him democracy, and, best of all, if he chooses his college wisely, it would give him as excellent a training as he could get anywhere else in the country, and often at considerably less expense.
Each college has its own traditions, its own atmosphere, its own ideals and character. It is well worth while looking into these things in choosing a college. It is almost as necessary to avoid incompatibility of tastes in choosing a college as it is in choosing a wife. There is the conservative college and the liberal; the college in a country town and the country town about a college; there is the college in a city and the college near one. Whether one likes one sort of situation or another depends very much upon the individual himself.
The subject of the large institution versus the small one has been much discussed. I have been a student in a large institution where I knew nobody and where nobody had the slightest curiosity or desire to know me; I have been a teacher in a small institution which grew during my term of service to one of the largest universities in the country. Each type of college has its own advantages.
The main argument in support of the small college as opposed to the big university is about the same as that offered in defense of the country town as contrasted with the city. The small college is more democratic, perhaps. Students in it come more closely into touch with the older members of the faculty and with each other. The number of extra-curriculum activities does not vary materially from those in the larger institution, and, since the enrollment of students is small, the competition for student honors is very much less keen. While in a big institution there might easily be one thousand students in the senior or junior class, in the small college there would not be one tenth as many. There is more chance, therefore, in the small college for the shy, unaggressive, commonplace man to gain prominence than in the larger one. There is, perhaps, more general comradeship, brotherly feeling, the life is more like home life, though the number of men whom one can know in a small college is not greater if so great as is possible in a big university outside of a great city.
The larger institution makes the stronger appeal to the man with initiative because it offers to him greater possibilities. To be manager or editor of a great college daily, to be captain of an athletic team whose victories are heralded from New York to San Francisco, to be president of a student organization in which there are five thousand votes to be considered, makes a strong appeal to the ambitious student. The opportunity, too, to touch elbows with men from all over the world, such men as one finds in a big university, is no small matter. The student in any large American university has a chance to know men from almost every civilized country in the world. The variety of interests, also, in the big institution is worth considering. I count it as one of the most valuable experiences of my college course, that though I was primarily interested in languages and literature while I was an undergraduate, yet I had daily associations with engineers and chemists, with prep-medics and mathematicians, and that, without consciously doing so, I acquired a considerable body of information and grew interested in a thousand incidental things through this association. One is more alone in a big institution, one has more freedom, one must more often fight single-handed one's own battles. There is more chance of being lost in the crowd and more honor if one rises above it.
One would suppose, if he did not know otherwise, that a freshman in college barring the matter of a few months difference in age, is quite similar to a senior in high school, but whoever assumed such a premise would be far from the truth. One can always tell a freshman at college, just as, with few exceptions, one can tell an American college man when he sees him whether in Duluth or Singapore. The freshman may be as self-possessed as possible; he may dress as he chooses; he may ask no foolish questions or show no lack of familiarity with the college customs; but he is a marked man the moment he sets foot on the campus. Whether he comes from South Hadley, Massachusetts, or a country town in Kansas with one general store and a post office, it makes little difference, he can not conceal the fact that he is a newcomer beginning his experience in college. He is like the American in Paris, or Rotterdam, who thinks that if he does not speak no one will know him for a foreigner, but who is spotted a block away by every small boy, and fakir, on the street.
No one knows how he tells a freshman—it is probably a matter of intuition. But the freshman learns rapidly to adapt himself to the new situation; he picks up at once the ways of the campus; by Thanksgiving he seems like an old settler, and by the end of the year he is ready to meet incoming freshmen with unerring recognition and condescension. Sometimes he adapts himself too incompletely to his new environment. It is as much a fault to cling rigidly to one's home manners and habits and dress as it is to throw these to the winds and adopt the extremes of college customs and fads. In the unimportant things of college life it is well for the freshman to keep his eyes open and to "do as the Romans do"; it is not wise for him, however, on his return home at Thanksgiving to attempt to reproduce and to establish the customs of Rome in his home community.
The differences between high school and college are marked. The methods of work and the ways of living are quite different from those in high school—quite different in fact, from what the boy thinks they are. It is not surprising that a high school boy's idea of college life is an erroneous one. What he knows of college he has most frequently gained from the exaggerated accounts of student escapades which he has seen in the newspapers, or from the stories which he has heard related by his big brother or a local athlete who has returned home from the scenes of his scholastic triumphs. Such tales are usually unhampered by facts, and concern themselves more with the unusual and the unimportant things of college than with its real work. If he has visited college at all it has more than likely been at the time of an important athletic contest, or of an interscholastic meet, when nobody works, or talks of work, and when the main thing under consideration is the athletic victory, and perhaps the celebration which follows. As he saw college then, it was a collection of carefree young fellows with little to do but to enjoy themselves, and perhaps occasionally, if nothing more important prevented, to attend a few lectures. In point of fact college life is a strenuous life, where every man should be about his own business seriously and continuously. If one is to get on well in college, or in life for that matter, the sooner one recognizes this fact and adapts himself to the situation the better. Failure in college comes from a failure to recognize the fact that the aims of the college are different from those of the high school, that the amount of work required is greater, and that the methods of doing it must, also, be different. A man must adjust himself to these changed conditions if he would get on.
The high school boy has seldom worked independently. He knew that if his work were not done when it should be, his teacher would remind him of the fact. When he was in difficulty there was some one to get him out. Whatever he did, or thought, was somewhat under the supervision of someone older or more experienced than himself. He judged of his success, or his progress, by what these people said of him or to him. In college it is different. Everyone must look after himself; much of his training consists in his doing so. If he doesn't hustle, no one is likely at once to call his attention to the fact.
The problem of living has not materially concerned a freshman before he comes to college. He has lived at home, and his comings and goings have been under the direction of the older members of the household. Most of his wants have been provided for without much thought or attention on his part. Mother has darned his stockings and picked out his neckties, and father has paid the bills. This matter of paying the bills is not to be ignored. The college man will get on more happily, he will more readily learn business methods, and he will live comfortably on a smaller amount if he has a stipulated monthly allowance. It ought to be sufficient to enable him to live comfortably, and it ought not to be so much as to necessitate wasting his time in order to spend it. The most discontented students about college and those who give college officers most concern are the students who have too little money to spend and those who have too much.
The habits of the boy going to college are as much the result of the conventions and customs of the community in which he has been brought up as of his own tendencies or inclinations. If he learned to dance it was because all the fellows did, if he went to church regularly, that was no necessary indication that he was religiously inclined; it was simply the custom. When he needed anything he asked for it without knowing much as to what it cost or where it came from. His comings and goings were somewhat supervised.
At college when his study program is decided upon, the disposal of his time is largely in his own hands. He may study one thing or another, or he need not study at all. He may read in the library, or walk down town, or watch the team practicing on the athletic field; there is no one to call him to account. If he attends regularly upon classes, and shows a reasonable intelligence regarding his studies, he may employ his time as he pleases. He may choose his own companions, and act with absolute independence. There is a delightful freedom in all this which is sometimes deceiving. He may assume that since no one calls him to account today there will be no reckoning tomorrow, but in this he is mistaken, for he is in reality being looked after pretty carefully. His time is his own, but it is his own to use wisely, and if he fails in this regard, he will suffer in the final reckoning, and that reckoning comes all too soon.
On entering college every freshman will have some definite problems to face in a more personal way than they have ever before been presented to him. In most cases he has previously been familiar more or less closely with all the temptations which are to be found in college, but at home he has often been shielded from them—they have been more a name than a reality to him. Sooner or later every man must meet temptation face to face and say yes or no to its proposals. To many a young fellow the critical time comes at about the age when he goes to college. For this the college is in no way responsible, though many conscientious men have tried to hang the blame there.
I should not feel that I was quite doing my duty if I did not say a word about the temptations peculiar to young men at the age when they enter college, and which in college, perhaps, are touched up with peculiar allurements and attractions. It is true that a large majority of young men are little affected by these temptations and still fewer are permanently injured by them, but those who fail in college do so usually not from inability to do the work, but because they are led away by these other things.
May I speak in a more personal and direct way to the boy entering college? First of all there is the habit of loafing. Before you leave the train which is carrying you to your college town, sometimes unfortunately even before you are out of high school, you will have made engagements for days and weeks in advance which will often seriously interfere with the real work of college. There is the fraternity rushing, and the open grate fire, and the pipe, and the vaudeville show, and the newfound friend, and the moon smiling down and inviting you out to stroll, and all these pleading in the strongest terms for self-indulgence, and self-gratification. There are a thousand other new and fascinating things which you may call by any name you please, but which after all are only other names for loafing. If you get into the habit of dawdling away your time, you can conjure up a hundred apparently good excuses for not studying, and for not going to class.
Perhaps one of the main reasons why it all seems so attractive and so safe is because the days are so long, and the time of final reckoning so far ahead and youth is so optimistic. I seldom call a man for procrastination and neglect of duty who does not tell me that it had been his serious intention to see me that day even if I had not called him, and I presume he is often telling the truth. I seldom talk to a loafer who has not promised himself, even before I urge him to get down to serious work, that he will stop loafing at once. The loafer has a sensitive conscience.
"I was coming in to see you today even if you had not called me," Walsh said to me this morning. "I know what you're going to say; I'm a loafer."
Loafing is a habit easily learned and hard to break, and it ruins more college careers at the very outset than does any other vice.
Then you should have a regular time for going to work each evening. You should not be turned from the habit by alluring invitations to get into card games, or to stand around the piano and develop your taste for poor music, or to waste the evening in attendance upon a low-class vaudeville show, or a racy moving picture performance, or even to sit in front of the fire and talk about politics or the girls with your room-mate. When the time comes for study, you should go to it as if you liked it, and do this six days in the week and three or four hours a day. If you do this for a month or two there will be little likelihood of your developing into a chronic loafer. I have said all of this knowing that every healthy young fellow will want pleasure and relaxation and knowing also that he ought to have it. But the day furnishes time enough for class work and study and recreation and sleep if the twenty-four hours are intelligently utilized, and there is plenty of healthful recreation for the body and the mind if one will look for it.
The temptation to waste time in gambling is an everpresent danger. There is a fascination in risking your judgment in a bet with another fellow or in a game of chance, which many a young man finds it hard to resist. It is so easy to argue that one must have some recreation, and, that if the time spent in playing games of chance is not intemperate or in excess of what one can afford, there should be no objection to the practice on the part of any sensible people. As to the money lost or won (for some one usually wins) it is often a negligible quantity, and in most cases not more perhaps than you might spend on a first class show or entertainment of any sort.
"What is the harm to me?" a young man asked me not long ago. "I can afford the time and the money it costs me. Why should I not play poker for money?"
I should answer that it is a dangerous habit, because it almost invariably leads to excesses. The gambler learns to take risks which he can not afford, to waste time that should be given to something else, to bet and to lose money which was not intended for this purpose, and he develops at once a reputation for unreliability. No business man, even if he himself gambles, cares to employ a young fellow who has, or has had the habit, simply because he knows the dangers which surround it. I have known few men who began the habit in college who found it easy to break, and I have known none who, even though he played for small stakes and won or lost very little money, was not injured by it. If the habit is nothing more, it is a time waster and leads into associations which it were usually better not to have formed.
As to drinking, perhaps, now that prohibition has become nation wide, we shall have little or none of that in college. Many fellows say to me that they learned to drink at home with their fathers and mothers about the dinner table. If it must be done, I know of no better place to do it. The drinking habit as I have seen it practiced in a college community has never been a help nor an advantage to any student, and it has usually been a distinct injury. The only excuse for it is that it is supposed to encourage sociability and to promote good fellowship; but the sort of good fellowship which it encourages is not of very high order. The men and women whom you are likely to meet at drinking places are not the kind that a college student will be benefited by knowing, and the time spent in their society is not usually spent in such a way as to make him a better citizen. It is a fact, also, that practically all the young fellows I have known who speak of the harmlessness of "taking a glass of beer occasionally" at one time or another take more than they can carry and are the worse for it. The safest plan if you are going to college with the idea of doing honest, satisfactory work is to leave the drinking of intoxicating liquors to those who have no real interest in the development of their moral and intellectual powers, for the drinking habit will invaribly play havoc with your college work, not to speak of your morals.
Smoking, too, although it can scarcely be called an immoral habit, has upon nervous and growing young fellows a bad effect. It is likely to develop restlessness and indigestion with the result that your power of concentration is weakened, your brain dulled, and the likelihood of your doing good work very much lessened. The habit of using tobacco is in these days so common among young men that it seems almost a waste of time to speak against it. I have, however, seen too many nervous systems weakened by its use, and the work of too many students injured irreparably, not to utter a word of warning against it. Though the number of young fellows in college who smoke is regrettably large, you will gain nothing either in prestige or dignity by doing so. The ability to hold a pipe between the teeth or to puff at a cigarette does not make you more of a man even in a college community, and the fact that you do not smoke brings you into no discredit. No one need to say that he was forced into smoking in college or that he was made uncomfortable by refusing to do so. If you find, therefore, that smoking is injuring your temper and your pocketbook and your studies, give it up; you will be quite as popular as you were before, and maybe more of a man.
If you have come from a healthy home where you have been taught by a good mother to live a clean life, and to respect all women, you may be shocked at first by some of the views which are presented to you, and later you may even come to the point of asking yourself if you have not been a trifle prudish in your ideas, and if the other fellow may not be right in his views. There will be those who will try to teach you that it is not only not necessary for you to lead a chaste clean life, but that it is positively not a healthy thing for you to do so. They will teach you that if you desire to gain your highest physical development you must gratify your physical desires, and such men are only too willing to show you how this may be done. The statements of thousands of reputable physicians are to the effect that no young man suffers physically by living a life of chastity, but on the contrary he gains in strength and endurance by such a course. The young man who allows himself to be led into the associations of lewd women either through curiosity or the desire to know something of "real life" is running the gravest sort of danger. Most men who submit themselves to such temptations fall a prey to them, and the result in most cases is a weakened will, a lowered moral tone, disease, a wrecked body, and eternal regret.
Only a few months ago I stood beside the operating table where a young college student was about to submit to a critical operation to alleviate a disease which he had contracted from a prostitute. He was thinking, I know, of the pain which he must endure and of the danger to his life, and looking up into my face he said, having in mind the many fellows to whom I talk every year, "Tell them they always have to pay for it; they always have to pay for it." Through many years of observation on thousands of students I have come to know that the boy's words are true. The clean, continent life is the only safe one, and those young men who think other wise and who gratify their physical passions "pay for it" ultimately in ruined health, and ruined characters, and ruined studies. The student with a clean mind and clean morals has the best chance of winning high scholastic standing. One other thing that you should well keep in mind—some day you are going to have a home of your own; and to take to it the girl whom you have chosen to be your wife. If at that time you can come to her with a body free from the effects of disease and a past life clean and wholesome, you may count the sacrifices of self-control as nothing compared with the satisfaction you will then feel.
In going to college most young fellows find themselves away from the restraints of home for the first time. Fathers and mothers often feel that this sending the boy away from home and putting him in the way of temptation and upon his own responsibility is a danger which they can not risk. Sometime or other, if one is to learn to swim, he must be thrown into the water, and allowed to make the struggle alone. It is not likely to work any damage if some one is sufficiently interested to stand by and watch the struggle, and if drowning is imminent, which is seldom the case, to extend the helping hand. Usually the swimmer learns because he has to, as the muskrat was said to learn to climb a tree. Having been given preliminary training he must be allowed to work out his own methods; he may go under a few times and take in a little water, but he learns in the end to swim.
It is equally true of the college man. He must learn independence and self-reliance, and self-direction in the same way that young people learn to swim. One of the greatest sources of satisfaction to a college officer is to see how few suffer real disaster in the learning, and, when these unfortunate results do come, the trouble is quite as often at home as elsewhere, and would very likely have occurred no matter where the young man had been.
The matter of your associates is a serious one. The majority of the people with whom you are most intimately thrown you may very likely have ever seen before; of their habits and their ancestors you can at first know but little. You should use caution, if you are to choose wisely. You will be better off and safer in the end if you go slowly and look about you before you plunge into too fast friendships, either literally or figuratively. Your friends are most likely to be your making or your undoing. You have your opportunity to choose them consciously, and you should do this with a full knowledge of what your choice may mean. Good friends will lead you in the right direction, will help you to cultivate healthy, right habits, and will aid you in getting out of your college course the best there is in it. I'll chosen friends may easily defeat all the right purposes for which you have come to college. Now, as always, a man is judged by the company he keeps.
All these problems are difficult, but they are possible of solution, and they are only a part of the training in the discipline of the mind and of the body which forms the major part of education.
Printed in the United States of America.