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

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?

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 8 text:

1- fe VCff 7726 college is so bound up with the best of life of the state that we must grow with its growth and strengthen with its strength. The new knowledge taught at [N. C. State] . . .the nature and extent of work it is now doing for the state. . .is so important and practical and contributes so directly to the relief of man ' s estate. that the people of North Carolina are bound to hold in appreciation and honor the agencies by which it has been brought home to them. Every student and alumnus of this institution can rest assured tliat a great future, commensurate with the greatness of the state, awaits their Alma Mater. She commands the elements that command success. Agromeck, Vol. 1.(1903)