The Sunday Eight O'Clock/Getting in to Things
I HAD a talk during examination time with a young fellow who was to receive his bachelor's degree, but who wished to be excused from attendance upon the exercises of Commencement.
"I don't care anything for your fool exercises," he said. "There's a lot of things I'd rather do than go through that sort of red tape."
"Have you no sentiment for the University?" I asked.
"No," he answered. "I came here for a degree, and now that I have earned it, I think I am entitled to it without any further foolishness."
His is not an uncommon view point. He had come from another college. He had been at the University during his senior year only, and there was no romance or sentiment or loyalty in his feelings; he had developed few associations, he had been touched by few traditions; he was stirred no more at the sight of the old buildings and the smooth sward and the graceful elms of the campus than he might have been by the sight of Mr. Ford's factory where the jitney bus in which he had ridden had been manufactured. He was after information, and the more he could get for his money, the better he was satisfied.
He had never gotten into things.
Few colleges will give a man a degree until he has been in residence for a certain time. There are, perhaps, many reasons for this, but one of them, at least, is that he may have time to get something of the spirit of the institution, to develop a feeling for it, to fall into its customs, and to get into things connected indirectly with its operation.
Students who do their work in summer sessions are often either from desire or necessity more practical, more serious, more eager for mere information than are regular students. They too often get little or nothing of the real life of the institution outside of the class-room, and so they frequently develop little or no feeling for the college. There are no tender family or home relations in the college life for them,—they are being fed at an intellectual boarding house or a quick lunch counter.
There are many activities about the campus at every session, and into these the student may very well go. They will broaden his sympathies, widen his horizon, and give him a feeling of ownership in the institution which is to be his alma mater.
"What good can I do these things?" a man asked me yesterday.
"Very little, perhaps," I answered; "but they can do you immeasurable good, if you will let them."
Even though he is in college for only a few weeks, it will do every man good to get into things.
July