St Helena Extension School - Saint Yearbook (Norfolk, VA)

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7 StucCmt By LeRoy Spruill and Barney Annas The inmates of Saint Helena, the on-campus students, tread their knowledge-laden paths with complete assurance that their aspiring climb upward will not be hindered by that pitiful mass of displaced persons, the off-campus student. The true off-campus student lives beyond the far-flung reaches of the antiquated trolley lines, and, to them. Saint Helena presents an almost impossible goal to attain each and every day. The school is located on the other side of a natural moat, to we who live on the Norfolk side, and is made doubly hard to reach because of the amazing regularity with which the drawbridge operates in the path of the oncoming students. Weighing each factor carefully it has been decided that the geography of the surrounding area and the architectural menace of the bridge is of trivial importance; the main disaccord in the existence of the off-campus student is that he experiences the horror of having a home of his own. The on-campus student who has only thirty or forty dormitory friends to contend with may be considered lucky. Allow your thoughts to dwell for a moment on the plight of the off-campus student who has returned home only to find that Little Sister Sue has dunked his history lecture notes in her oatmeal, or, worse yet, upon arising, he is confronted with a formidable opponent in the shape of his wife, grotesquely disarrayed and lurking behind puckered lips — waiting for her reward for burning his breakfast. He usually arises two hours before class time, literally vegetates for minor eternities at isolated street car stops, is dissected physically and mentally by irate conductors and groggy shipyard workers, only to be thwarted by The Bridge before he arrives in school. Pity the poor soul who commutes ten to forty miles a day from such places as Suffolk, Virginia Beach, or Monkey Bottom, North Carolina. He has to contend with sleep-blinded drivers, hazardous driving by moonlight, and mental deterioration on his own behalf. He is usually late for his first class, and, toward the waning hours of the day, would seem to be ready for the infirmary or Miss Tillotson’s nerve pills. When the day’s sch edule has been survived, he must repeat the agony of a return trip, only to face an empty house, or worse. Grandma, rocking maliciously, and conflicting Hume’s philosophy with her own. That evening, to the tune of yowling offspring, he will dine, and, more important than the Napoleonic Wars, he will “do the dishes.’’ Studying is a simple matter, accomplished between visiting relatives and inquiring children. The off-campus student conquers college: with grease-stained lecture notes, being fortified with heartburn, and with cries of chorusing dependents ringing in rouge-smudged ears — he’s off! [ 107 ]

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