University of Pittsburgh - Owl Yearbook (Pittsburgh, PA)

Page 17 text:

What the full life amounts to is people: individuals interacting, stimulating, encouraging, challenging other individuals. Sometimes the mere existence of one serves to inspire another. More often there is a word, a glance, a touching of fingers and souls. The essence of life flows from one to the other, miraculously enriching both. Eyes meet, and barriers are shattered. The raw need is there; the honest are aware that it can be filled only by giving. The University offers of itself, and the individual may take at will. It extends from the classroom, where the giving and taking are each one-sided, to the Tuck Shop or a dorm or the Commons Room. The deeper it becomes, the greater its power to build or destroy. The individual opens his soul to another, and risks self-destruction. But the need is so great, the risk must be taken. Fulfillment demands the utmost from each, yet holds out its tantalizing reward, limited only by the individual’s capability and courage. Words flow constantly, but the giving is to be found in the eyes; the taking, in the heart. One person succeeds in reaching out to another, and love is born. This, after all, is an answer to the need. 13

Page 19 text:

 In the course of an individual’s growth, there comes a shattering moment of existential awareness. He is hit by the terror of irrefutable aloneness, its hollow echo reaching to his very being. Answers have been found with and through others, but the ultimate answer must be found within oneself. Alone. It is perhaps the highest goal of education to enable the individual to face solitude unflinchingly and with hope. He must transcend the immediate and reach to timelessness. He must surpass the trivia and create of himself, for himself. There comes the moment when he must close his eyes and search deeply inward. Only he can judge for himself what he is, and whether it is sufficient. 15