Albany College of Pharmacy - Alembic Yearbook (Albany, NY)

Page 18 text:

In part the reason is the spirit of the times, for it must be confessed that to a degree this same concept is prevalent in almost every walk in lifeg in part to the system of education now popular, which is content with the student's passing many courses of which he knows but little or nothing when he has finished, a system which wastes his time over 'isms and lologies, few of which he is ever likely to use and finally graduates him unable to spell, scarcely able to write and totally unfamiliar with the rule of three, and in part it is not unlikely to the inadequacies of the instructor himself. That my words may not seem to you to be merely my habit of mind, let me quote in closing the words of the head of one of the most famous prep schools in this country, The boy who starts in at a ' prep' school or anywhere else with a policy of ' getting by 3 will have a lot of reforming to do if ever he gets where he ought to go. ' Getting by' stands at one extremeg Emerson's dictum ' Hitch your wagon to a star' stands at the other. S. L. D. ml? .l I 'll dba 20

Page 17 text:

The plant world is possessed of life and activity, is constructed in accordance with fixed laws, is capable of producing only its kind, each plant retaining its essential characteristics and capable of being classified just as exactly as the animal kingdom. Wfhy should they not be intensely interest- ing to all who make a study of them? . ls it not the way one approaches these subjects that determines their interesting phase or the opposite? Let one enter upon these courses with honest and persevering effort and they will soon become as attractive as other branchesof pharmaceutical education. A. B. H. As the years have passed, as I have perisisted in my attempt to teach a minimum of microscopy and pharmacognosy to a maximum of students in pharmacy, a query has with ever-increasing frequency forced itself to the front until it has at last occupied the head of the line-and that interro- gation, that erotem which marks our occasional meetings, says with ever- increasing emphasis- is it worth while? Annually Qwith the addition of a few hardy perennials Q I see before me a goodly class of sensible young people, a majority of them direct from the high school, who have come to our school avowedly to make preparation for their life work. So-me of these earning the money themselves, either in whole or in part, to pay for their tuition, others at the cost of more or less sacrifice on the part of parents or friends. Year by year is enacted the selfsame tragedy, or, so far as microscopy is concerned, the same old comedy by a hundred or more intelligent young people who with but a few excep- tions seem to care for but little ibut getting byf' of escaping as easily as possible from the censorious teacher who has been set over them. Failing to realize that the mediocre is the enemy of the best, that the world is crowded with individuals whose whole life is one steady round of getting byg that in every walk in life the majority of persons manage to satisfy themselves with doing work that will enable them to get by,', with those who are content if their work vvill let them draw their salaries and not be dropped from the pay roll, that the great successes in this life are as a rule the result of earnest, honest effort rather than the possession of genius, they are satisned to be far less than they could or ought to be. 19

Page 19 text:

ew' awww The Class of Nineteen Sixteen presents this hook to those whose interests and sympathies are closely connected with the experiences herein portrayed. Mwmmm