Birmingham Southern College - Southern Accent Yearbook (Birmingham, AL)

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and pliant by frequent exercise, and for that reason my lack of a college edu- cation — involuntary, I assure you — has never been a source of worry. It has been my observation that while it is quite true that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, a great deal of knowledge is equally menacing to our ability to gain happiness from life. I have always believed and my experience has taught me that too much education sometimes brings affectation; and a man may be affected mentally as well as socially. It is good to retain close kinship with the simple, homely things of life, and the ability to appreciate these can very quickly be refined out of a man unless he has an extraordinary amount of poise and a viewpoint that only practical life can give. I have always thought that the thing of greatest value that a man gets out of a college education is not what he learns in class room or lecture h What he gets from the fraternity house; from commencement hops; from the athletic field; from the debating chamber are of infinitely more practical value to him in after life than all the facts that he could possibly gather about the campaigns of Caesar or Alexander or the literary excellencies of the Victorian poets. The biggest lesson in life that youngsters have to learn is to associate on amicable terms with those about them, and this ability is acquired. One is born with it only in exceptional cases. One must practice it assiduously. And this is the great lesson that college life teaches. It teaches youth how to meet the problems that he will confront after he has forsaken the sheltering wings of Alma Mater and finds himself battling in the storm where quarter is neither asked nor given. So that I do not share the outcry that is current in some quarters that ath- letics is being over-emphasized in modern college life. Or that fraternities have no proper place on the campus. It is in these student activities that a man rubs off the rough spots of selfish- ness that are an atavistic inheritance from the primeval lessons of Mother Nature. Here he forms friendships and establishes contacts which will be green spots in his memory so long as he shall live. And here he learns the two supreme lessons of life — how to lose, but above all how to win. A

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Wkat I Learned by Staying Aw ay from College By Jack Bf.thea Y STAYING away from college, I learned the value of a college education — and it wasn ' t the part of a college education which ordi- narily is regarded as the most valuable. I say with all sincerity that I never have missed a college educa- tion from an academic standpoint. Perhaps my situation was peculiar, but I have never found the lack of so-called book-larnin ' any particular handicap. And I say this with a full regard for the knowledge that is to be found in books. Books are the storehouse of the accumulated wisdom of the ages — they are the final expression of the evolution of this civilization of ours that has pro- duced the world as we know it. But I have always thought that for an - individual to attempt to carry in his head even a fragment of all this knowledge would subject the skull to too great a pressure, and it would inevitably burst. The best we can hope to do is to learn in some small measure where this knowledge may be found when needed. In my time it has been necessary for me to become an expert temporarily on a number of subjects about which I previously had known nothing. This re- quired intensive research work for a few hours, and I then had all that could possible be of any practical use to me. And because I did not go to college I ha e never found it difficult to locate the particular kind of knowledge that I wished at the moment. That is what we have public libraries for and reference works for. In fact, that is the reason for books. And when the necessity for thorough knowledge of my subject had passed, I never attempted to remember it, knowing that I could always go back to the source and refresh my recollection if that became necessary. I suppose that newspaper work requires that a man shall keep his mind supple

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