TO THE INCOMING FRESHMAN

Much has been said upon your entering the final stage of your education, and much remains to be said. You have already received countless notices from University Hall informing you of the more routine duties which must be performed prior to your first glimpse of Harvard College. Upon your arrival in Cambridge you are greeted with still more baffling tasks and duties which will keep you occupied for the majority of your time for the next three days. Advice and warning will be issued to you ad infinitum until it may seem that all Harvard is but one round of meetings, examinations, and well meant instructions.

But do not let this early paternalism frighten you or even allow you to feel that Harvard will do your thinking for you. These first few days contain much spoon feeding, used in an effort to make the transition from school to college as easy as possible. Within the next few weeks that nursing system will stop as abruptly as it began and you will be left entirely upon your own, with only the guiding hand of an extremely busy adviser to help you. It is up to you in these first few weeks to make this year what it is. First hour examinations come in the all too short period of six weeks, before you have scarcely received your sea legs. Then, indeed, comes the first day of reckoning in which an exceeding large number fall by the probationary wayside. There it is that the first dawn of Harvard begins to glow in the minds of the harassed Freshman. There he may see for the first time the early kindness of the first few days give way before the grim reality of hard labor necessary to maintain the required standards of a Harvard education

It is not our position to serve as law giver and mother to all incoming Harvard men, but perhaps now is the time for a word of advice and warning which has been learned from experience by every Harvard man. Too many Freshmen become completely lost after the first week and fall to keep aware of the fact that Harvard is essentially a place of education and not a proving ground for prep school ideas of Boston's social life. Too many find themselves slipping farther and farther behind as the result of failure to start at once in their college career. The line of least resistance is certainly that of taking a long and easy time to become started; but it is also the line of most certain disaster. Let this be a word of warning. These three days are seemingly easy though mystifying, but let them not serve as a sample of what is to come. All too soon it will be plain what the real Harvard is, then indeed the time has come to apply yourself and start the final stage of your education.