North Carolina State University - Agromeck Yearbook (Raleigh, NC)

Page 6 text:

Prologue My University years have been the most contemplative of my life. I ponder problems, dissect issues and make plans more often than I did before I came to State. Why, I ' m not sure. I don ' t think the campus, with its urban setting, inspires me to think about my development as a human being. And too often coursework is too bland and unchallenging to offer in- centive for philosophical thought. I scarcely expected my existence to be so totally intellectual in college. So physical were my high school days that thought had an almost catastro- phic effect on my system. For it is one thing to be trained to meet provincial situations and quite another to face the non-academic challenge of an expanded environment such as State provides. To have never wrestled with meaning- ful questions and to suddenly find that answers are needed, is frustrating, especially if the answers are slow in coming. I suppose that accounts for my con- stant feeling that my plight is unique, when actually I know that even the first students at A M College in 1 889 felt the same pangs of indecision and futiUty. I remember the freshman year so vividly. Registration was bewildering, I thought, but not overwhelming. It was only about November, after I had studied some of the most useless trash in the world, cheered myself silly at four or five football games and gene- rally passed all my time in sometimes exciting, sometimes boring, but never satisfying activities, that I began to wonder: what does it all meanl

Page 5 text:

1969 Agromeck Volume LXV North Carolina State University at Raleigh A Quest For Identity Prologue 1 Heritage 17 Now 81 Future 273 Epilogue 358

Page 7 text:

For after all, what does a Saturday night drunk, or a history quiz, or an evening of necking mean when the time for making essential contribu- tions to my personal mettle, or to the human community is clearly around the comer? What does it all mean? Can partial derivatives, the date of the Exodus, or the analysis of the inputs to a political system really help me to be a better person? Can I really expand my thinking, realize maturity through pep ralhes, bull sessions, touch football?