The Graduate Adviser

"The first system for which renovation of some sort is desirable is the manner with which Faculty advisers guide freshmen at the outset of their undergraduate careers. I should say, rather, fall to guide. There seems to be an idea that the freshman year, with its full quota of prescribed courses, is rather a waste anyway and is not deserving of serious attention. The advisers, consequently, explain as briefly as possible the methods of distribution and concentration, fill up the freshman's cards with all the elementary courses it will hold, and dismiss the young man with the conviction of a job well done. I recall that the gentleman to whom I was intrusted ushered me into his room in an impressively efficient manner, and abruptly asked me what I was interested in. Having a vague notion that I liked Shaw and Galsworthy and Shakespeare, I murmured 'English.' 'Excellent,' my advisor snapped, 'you must take English 28. Good-day.' Thus was I launched into what might have been four years of study in English literature, without first having any conception of the possibilities of other concentration.

"It may, of course, be argued that concentration does not begin in earnest until the sophomore year anyway, and that the freshman has plenty of time to look around, himself, before commencing. As a matter of fact, this theory of the drifting freshman coming to a safe mooring by his second year is both dangerous and fallacious. It is fallacious because nineteenths of the first-year men have no more real understanding of the purposes and potentialities of a Harvard education in June than, they had in September. It is dangerous because it may involve an irreparable loss of time and the self-educated choice of a field into which actually the student should never have entered. If four years of college are at all important, they are worth, thinking about from-the very beginning. The average freshman does not think, to the extent that he inquires, examines, and reflects upon. He has an impression that he is going to concentrate in English: during his first year the impression, unless, stirred up and turned over, hardens and become a resolution. That is why, I believe, one encounters so many seniors who, when asked what their field of concentration is, answer with a weary shrug. 'Oh, English.' What is necessary is an adviser who at the outset will devote time to explaining thoroughly all the varied possibilities that the freshman may choose: an adviser, let it be said, who has intelligence enough also to know what the freshman ought to take, and regardless of what he wants to take, and who has sufficient persuasion and logic to induce him to follow the advice. Exactly what is the importance of Renaissance history? Or, the respective merits and advantages of sciences and economics, in an age which stresses both to the exclusion of most others: or, the vital and personal benefits to be derived from a study of Philosophy. These are questions which I have occasionally heard juniors discussing: Yet they should be placed before every freshman, at least in such a way that he sees what lies before him.

"It would appear, perhaps, an unnecessary expenditure of time and effort for the adviser to go so thoroughly into a matter which more than half of his students will never care about anyway. But after all, it is the very least that can be done, to attempt to arouse intellectual interest and to stimulate it along channels amenable to its particular characteristics. The ninety-and nine failures on the part of the adviser will measure up small in comparison with the one success the one student who comes there interested in nothing at all, and quite able and willing, his visions opened, and his horizons broadened. And as to the freshmen who enter with genuine interests, they certainly should be given all the advice and encouragement that is possible." --First Report, Class of 1927.