Ricker Classical Institute - Aquilo Yearbook (Houlton, ME)

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The Aquilo Page Twenty-three originality, only very evident marks of procrastination. .And then, too, I know that there are students who continually delay the preparation of their work because they do not have or do not follow' a proper time schedule. General stu- dents I know have a habit of taking things easy during spare periods, little realizing that there may be no more spare periods in wvhich to pre- pare other assignments. It seems that they are too confident of their ability to do a long assignment in a s-hort time. As a result they delay doing the work until just before class- time. When the ranks are issued, I think it will be very evident that they are defeating the very purpose of going to college. Another cause for procrastination is that a weakness to diversions makes it easy for nearly everyone to leave duty for pleasure. A desire for pleasure easily overcomes an in- clination to work. Tennis is much more attractive than physics pro- blems, An English theme looks very trivial when compared directly to a good social. But, as a general rule, we should overrule the desire for pleasure and do our work. If we do not, there soon will be no pleasure of any sort for us because there will be a barrier of work always before us, a 'barrier erected through our own procrastination. i- i WHAT PRICE STUDY? The primary object of every col- lege student should be his studies. Whatever else 'he may choose to do while at school, his studies should receive his first consideration. Study- ing is the essential factor in getting high grades, and those grades deter- mine one's start in life. There are several short cuts to high grades, and every student should take ad- vantage of them. The first short cut is much talked about, but seldom followed- concen- tration. If one's work is to be done 'well,,it must be given the undivided attention of the student. This can- not be given by alternating a few minutes of study with a few minutes of play. These two activities have their part in college life, but they should not be mingled. Then, too, another short cut is to be prepared always to recite on Monday. After a couple of days of rest, few students have the ambition to prepare their lessons for Monday. The time for a small star to shine is when others are dim. Few students recite well on the first day of the week. Monday's lessons should be prepared on Saturday leaving Sunday for rest. If the lessons are left until Sunday, time may not be found to prepare them at all. Finally, when all lessons are pre- pared, an extra ten minutes Slwllld be spent in looking each over. One should especially note the important points of the assignment. This gives a polished recitation. If these things are followed faith- fully, a high grade results. The stu- dent who is determined to do well in his Studies will do well. He is the one who will be a success in life. As his grades 'were high .in college, so will they be in -the school of life. PERSEVERANCE, A NECESSARY CHARACTERISTIC Some young people go through college in a sort of listless and lazy manner. Studying is apparently very dull and monotonous for them. We all admit that there are often things more attractive for us than tiresome outside reading assignments and

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Page Twenty-two The Aquilo Bernard Porter-Dean's List at Colbyg Glee Club, Physics Assistant. Volney -Bell-Member of Football tcam of Defiance College, Ohio. Ruth Nadeau -Dean's List at Colby, Glee Club, Colby Night Play. MY MIND IS A QUEER STORAGE PLACE Now that I stop to puzzle it out, I see that my mind is indeed a queer storaige place. To me it consists of three separate departments - the sorting room, the orderly room, and the miscellany room. In one of these rooms may be placed' every fact I know, should know, or am trying to learn. However, I am dissatisfied with the proportion of these depart- ments. Therefore I am trying to enlarge the orderly room and establish a more efficient connection between it and the sorting room. To do this I must decrease the size of the mis- cellany room, The first department is the medium sized sorting room in which several iiny clerks are trying to classify and transfer to the proper place the facts that are continually crowding in. Just now they are seriously at work on a vast heap of physics formulas and laws concerning rotary motion, of trignometric functions, of German vocabularies, and of other complicat- ed tangles of facts that a college student is expected to straighten. To what fate these facts are doomed I have no idea, Just now their destiny depends mostly upon the weather, my and a telephone call. pocketbook, The small orderly room is a marvel. It is kept by an old gentleman of such brilliance of memory that he can, at a moment's fact that is notice, bring forth any packed snugly away in the precisely arranged racks. My only regret is that this department is not larger and more completely equipped. However, I have a skilled carpenter, 'College Education, tearing down the miscellany room, bit by bit, and transforming it into an extension of the orderly room. As long as I treat this carpenter well, I know he will work for me-even up to the time of my unavoidable destruction. The miscellany room, the largest but most useless of the three, will soon be reduced to meager proportions if my present reconstruction plan continues. You can glimpse the nature of the roomxif you imagine a room in which billions of small notes flutter aimlessly about, driven by the breeze from an electric fan. When a certain note is wanted, one search- es frantically, usually unsuccessfully, through the cloud until he quits in disgust. A few days later, when one has no use for it, the note will drop serenely into his hand. Such is the storage place of my mind, a place for things I am trying to learn, for facts I am certain I know, and for facts that I know only under certain conditions. PROCRASTINATION IN OUR CLASS During the past few weeks, the habit of procrastination has been steadily growing upon the class unitil it has become noticeable in nearly every course. In tracing this habit I come to the conclusion that it is a direct result of either laziness, a poor time schedule, or a weakness for diversions. I think that some students pro- crastinate because they? are really They 'have an indolent atti- lazy, tude toward studying that their ambi- tion tion cannot overcome. The prepara- of every subject that they do not like is put off until later. Later, it. To this also belong who always there is no time to do group of lazy students those unprincipled fefw wait for a classmate to do the work. Then a social call is in order and all the work that can be used is soon copied. In the work of the idle, we can find no signs of improvement or

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Page Twenty-four W -A The Aquilo exercises .in English composition. However, when we get out in life things won't be all sunshine, and we will have to face the ups and downs of every day life. ' Perhaps we are too easily discour- aged. Famous people who have accomplished great things did not do it in a day. As a person learning to play the piano has to practice tire- some scales hour after hour before becoming an accomplished' player, so the person who wants to reach the top, in any work, must overcome many things and perform irksome duties to obtain his desire. On the ladder of success, we do not go from the bottom step directly to the top ibut step after step, and he who has cultivated the characteristic of perseverance will reach the top, though the pace of ascent may be slow. HOW T0 WRITE THEMES I was stretched out on my bed, deeply buried in my Physics lesson. QI had the book over my face to keep the light out of my eyes.J From time to time the gritting of teeth from fthe study table awoke me. It was my worthy roommate grinding out his weekly theme. The gritting annoyed me. Don't grit, I pleaded. How can I study Archimedes' principle when you grit all the time? His contorted lips formed a single word. Theme, he growled, as if I were responsible for a monstrous injustice that had been heaped upon him. Oh, Theme , I said, quickly going back to sleep, still buried in my Physics book. Callous though I may have seemed at the time, yet I was deeply moved by his misery and by the misery of my fellow classmates who attempt to write themes. 'Realizing that the difficulty comes from ignorance of the fundamental procedure of com- position, I have prepared my short but weighty treatise on the writing of themes, a work which I hope will be very helpful. Happiness, as philosophers have pointed out, comes from helping our fellow men. Now I shall outline my procedure for writing themes. First, you must have a subject, so list all the topics you can think of on paper. Then shut your eyes and go eeny-meeny-miny- mo to choose the topic that you are to write upon. This quaint little device eliminates all the effort that goes into picking out a topic in the usual manner, and is only one of my ways of increasing efficiency, Having chosen a topic, which, nine times out of ten, will be A Fishing Trip, take a sheet of white Paper and scowl at it fifteen or twenty minutes, meanwhile muttering and chewing at one end of your pencil. If no results are forthcoming, change your policy, and chew on the other end, This will .invariably produce two results: tal you will break the lead' off your pencil, and lbj you pro- bably will poison yourself slightly. By this time you should have had an inspiration. Now, for instance, if you are writing about fishing you might describe trolling for pickerel. Personally, I do not approve of this method of fishing pickerel, but as that is irrelevant to my present topic, I shall take it up in a later volume under Fish, How to Catch. But, as I was saying, you should have had an inspiration by this time. - Now that you have your inspir- ation, you may find difficulty, if your vocabulary is limited, in finding suit-