I Learned These Things by Timothy Haye (The thoughts which appear in the -following article were submitted by a tormer Weber student who says that he offers neither reasons nor apologies for his writing. In a note accompanying the manuscript he says, "I can't spell, punctuate, or write a decent hand, but with head slightly bowed I submit it nevertheless." There has been much editing of the original draft. Shifts and omissions have been made. But as much meaning has been preserved as necessary deletion and rephrasing would permit. Editor's Note.) I AM a college man. In the conventional way I was I awarded a degree and the usual congratulations of the well-meaning and the misled. Having been told that I was the hope of humanity, I sat around a few weeks in the summer sun and was pleased with the knowledge of my important place in the scheme of things. Then I offered my talents to many men who seemed unaware of my value. Finally I got a job in a brewery. One day during brew time I sat on the loading platform meditating. I began to ask myself questions about the advantage of education and the knowledge of those who declared my vital role. Did I learn anything of any use to me in college? Did I learn anything in college? Wondering about education has not been for me wholly a post-graduate indulgence, for often as a student I suspected that two and two do not always make four in matters academic. But while I went to school I was too close to learning and so lacked the proper perspective. It was after I had presented my diploma to an unimpressed world that my attitude toward institutional training became heretical. I found it necessary to construct a new philosophy, one that would allow me to work in a brewery (brewery money buys a lot of nice things, including more education) and still feel entitled to breathe the air of the educated. I began by setting down, as concretely as I could, some of the items of knowledge I came by through my college experiences. First, and most emphatically, I learned that there are a lot of people in the world and that they don't give a damn who you are, what you are going to be, or what your difficulties seem to be. They aren't worried about saving you and don't believe that you can save the world. Secondly, I learned (I was a pre-medic) that there is no glamor in medicine the first hot afternoon I spent in the entomology lab with a basket of rotting eggs. It was not at all glamorous to slice rabbits' eyes on the microtome while the business and sociology students went to the matinee dance. There was no fascination for me in learning long lists of formulae or being forced to sit through tedious hours of "cultural' courses that would make me a more polished minister to the afflicted. I was told that since I was to become a physician, and consequently a most responsible person, I must take my life seriously and mold my conduct according to the great principles of honor and integrity. This generated in me a mysterious and glorious sense of fear and responsibility, a feeling that soon died when I saw my pals cheat in exams, buy last years' drawings for comparative anatomy lab, juggle figures, and for convenience become stereotyped extroverts with pseudo-sophisticated notions about morals and the alleviation of pain. I learned how foolish I had been to believe in sincerity. Third, I learned to distrust books and professors.- I came to tolerate subjects with no more intention of really learning them than of memorizing the names of all the Egyptian kings. Fourth, I learned that woman is God's greatest mystery and that my thoughts could easily become, and often did become, divided between Chemistry 71 and the theoretical delights of adolescent romance. Fifth, I learned how close one can be brought to insanity by the dejection that comes from not passing an entrance exam given under unnatural conditions in an atmosphere of elimination. Sixth, I learned that one can be hungry on a full stomach, hungry for conversation or a friendly, encouraging word, hungry for music. I can remember times when through weeks that seemed without end I went over to college hall and listened to the band practice or to someone playing .the organ at midnight. Once I went to a concert alone and heard a blind organist play Harvey Gaul's La Brune and felt my soul soar and the tears spill down my cheeks. On another occasion I learned the difference between music lovers, celebrity lovers, and simple lovers when I listened outside the doors of an overcrowded hall to Rachmaninoff play his Prelude in C Minor. I saw music lovers sit in windows with eyes to the sky, celebrity lovers stand on tip toe to see the maestro and then leave for a movie, and lovers take up two good seats when they needed only one. Seventh, I learned the disillusioning truth that scholarship students and honor graduates do not always make good teachers, that often they lose sight of the true purpose of a course in wearisome attention to insignificant detail. Those whose souls had not been scorched by the flames of pure scholarship did most for me. One teacher without keys taught me to see the poetry in organic chemistry, the worth of a truly scientific attitude, and the vast ironies that make up society, athletics, and the moral order. He taught me to desire a majestic old age and to avoid the strangling restrictions of intense specialization. Another "common clay" teacher impressed it upon me that the Bible can be read to good advantage and that grades usually vary directly according to volume and binding of class notes. He taught me that class notes are meant to aid the teacher in grading rather than to aid the student in learning. I learned from him that self-made men are often self-satisfied and that men are not scientists simply because they appear to be. ~From him ! learned the wholesomeness of self-sacrifice and honest effort. Eighth, I learned that Junior Proms are events much talked about by girls, functions characterized by gaudy artificiality and dedicated to the excessive spending of hard-earned dollars. They are noisy confusions of half-dressed girls, half-baked sophomores, and half-drunk seniors. (Continued on Page 20) page SIXTEEN