University of Wisconsin Stevens Point - Horizon / Iris Yearbook (Stevens Point, WI)

Page 9 text:

i 17]

Page 11 text:

TO THE SENIOR CLASS OF 1916 [TURING your Normal School life you have been industrious, am bitious, persevering. You have finished the prescribed course; you have fought a good fight; you have kept the faith of honest endeavor for a worthy purpose; you deserve the congratulations showered upon you. Let me admonish you that a purpose attained should lead to the formation of a higher purpose. This purpose may be near or remote, clear or vague, strong or weak, impelling or sluggish, but the choice of a worthy purpose should be made. T he primary question is, “How shall I become a man and do a man’s work in the world.” All other problems pale into insignificance. What as you stand to-day on the vantage ground of your graduation, is your dominating purpose, the purpose that gives motive for action, reason for restraint, light to the eye, courage and cheer to the heart, energy to the body, and indomitable resolution to the will? Have you formulated it? Have you fashioned the ideal of the work you are to do, and the power you are to be ten or twenty years hence? Make instant and careful decision. The aim, the purpose, is the overmastering thing in life. Pursue it with perseverance and opportunities for its attainment will spring up on every hand, as the vitalizing purpose is alert and ever creates the conditions that make for improvements. The Creator has, in His infinite goodness, endowed all of us with the instinct for growth—we are born to grow. We can grow in courage, in power, in faith, and in wisdom, only thru the performance of our daily tasks with promptness and fidelity, conscious in our hearts that none could better our performance. There is no wiser method of analyzing our expanding purposes, and preparing to do large things in the future, than by the proper discharge of the duties of the present, approaching each in the spirit of the artist, and doing each as thoroughly as if it were a final result. Keep your body, mind, and heart persistently at their best. Seize every opportunity for growth thru university education, reflection and action. Say repeatedly, “I must, I can, I will.” Never lose sight of the higher purpose that animates you. The laurel of genuine success will crown your every effort, and you will grow into the stature of the men and women that God intended you to reach. John F. Sims. m