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

Page 9 text:

The image of the self-conscious college student, crusading, meditating, subjectifying his whole environment, has become as much a part of the American popular culture as the con- cept of the frenetic teenager. The fact that parents and teachers look back on their youthful struggles with patronizing amusement doesn ' t really alter the immediacy of our own struggles. And whether for good or ill, this college has a way of rendering these problems immediate and imperative and of creating a deep seated disturbance that one may avoid in the anonymity and passivity of a larger, more undemanding school. The decision of choosing a niche in the pocked and shelved wall of society; the hope of maybe doing something a little beyond forty hours, two weeks paid, nice house and kids,- the gnawing recurrence of an insane idea, of really having enough guts to put those fine discussion group ideas into your actual life— all these demand resolution; all of them lie with you at night and go with you in your waking like an old man ' s wet-weather ache.

Page 11 text:

There is a way to survive, though. When the big questions — those of future, ambition, and sanity — become too great, you can always submit to the mesmerism of campus life. There is no novocain so complete, no numbness so sublime as the complex, non-crucial routine of subsisting on this campus. Among labs and library carrels, with erudite, unthinking re- search in beige-walled dorm rooms you can actually accom- plish the difficult task of losing yourself — from yourself. Surely, there must be some here who are either so well ad- justed or so unconscious to begin with that such a spiritual vacation at some time during four years is not necessary. But most of us, soon or late, become so suffocated that nerveless absorption with the task of learning is a welcome respite. It is like living by an outline, form without content, in which the spin! is an ob|ective and unconcerned spectator to the postur- ings of its body. It is very easy to fall into the habit of labeling that which we are too lazy to analyze or unable to define as intangible, and you have probably heard it said that Southern has such a quality, some pervading essence which draws and holds peo- ple to it. Southern does have an intangible, or at least an elusive, quality which sets it apart; but this feeling produces estrangement and affection, loyalty and distaste in relatively equal amounts. It is this quality which produces our need for occasional self isolation and which spawns the perennial talk of transfer to a more attractive, sophisticated campus. Paradoxically, the same aspect of life at Southern brings us back each year in spite of our protestations and creates in us a grudging, but tenacious, affection. If we cannot pinpoint what it is about this school that be- longs uniquely to it, at least it is not difficult to say when it operates most strongly; when this hill becomes a complete world for you, detached from outside ties of location and af- fection; when you feel like a tiny, sterilized bearing in a great, slow grinding gear, and there is a persistent heat behind your eyes that means you are torn between an absolute hate and repulsion for every person here and a staggering need to have |ust one person care if you now or ever walk down that cold hill in the early morning. The time when it really gets you is winter quarter.