EARLY TO RISE

In announcing that every Freshman who has fallen prey to November hour examinations will be given a private heart to heart talk in order to discover his personal difficulties, the deans of 1940 have made an important contribution to the welfare of the class. On entering a large university, where the emphasis rests on individual responsibility and where no helping hands are stretched out from above, the Freshman is often snowed under by a storm of new and entirely different experiences. The transition between school and college is in many cases the hardest step on the scholastic ladder, and for the college to recognize individual troubles and to give them personal attention is only to fulfill an integral part of its educational responsibility.

One of the major difficulties that men experience in Freshman year is the lack of personal association with the faculty. Taken from schools where twenty-five is a large class, and subjected to the mass production tactics of a History 1 or Chemistry A, the student finds himself alone on a sea of learning and has no one to whom to turn for guidance. In many courses the section-hands, unable to take time from the press of research, are cold and unsympathetic to their struggling pupils, and the Freshman advisors, who ought to shoulder the burden of helping out in time of trouble, have repeatedly been shown to be advisors only in name. As a result, the fire of learning, which the University should encourage in the hearts of even its youngest members, has been smothered instead of fanned.

Those in the Yard who failed to pass the recent tests should not fall into the slough of despond, for the statistics indicate that most of those who fall by the wayside in November eventually get back into good standing, while the real mortality rate begins to show in February. Meanwhile it is not too much to ask that the University take heed to the age long plea for an effective adviser system in order to shift the onus of talking to every erring Freshman from the shoulders of the deans.