President Henry Nelson Snyder’s advice to college students, presented in the 1938 College Handbook.
If college students read half of what is written about them, the kind of education they are getting, and the sort of world that is waiting for them, they would deserve our deepest sympathy. They themselves do not know what they are doing and don’t seem to care; the education they are offered is all wrong and doesn’t fit them for anything; and the world they are facing is confused, disturbed, troubled, and heavy with colossal problems beyond the possibility of a solution—or so it is said.
If I were one of them now, I should try to get from my college course the things that could count in any sort of world, and the first thing would be the habit of hard, patient, persistent, intelligent work at the common tasks that college offers. The habit of work has ever been the way of success.
In the second place, I should accept the mere routine of college as a blessed thing, holding me steady to the duties at hand, creating a controlling sense of obligation in meeting classes, the chapel hour, and any other daily responsibilities. Any kind of life tomorrow is sure to have much of routine to it.
Then I should do my level best to make myself a well-informed man or woman. I should be very busy getting acquainted with the fundamental sciences that are so intimately related to satisfactory living, and with what certain great peoples have contributed to that complex called modern civilization and culture – Jewish, Greek, Roman, Italian, German, French, Spanish, English. To these I would add Sociology, Economics, and Political Science. All this but hints that I should not like to go into whatever kind of world that may happen to be, ignorant of the forces that control it. Surely there will be no place in it for the misinformed and the unenlightened!
Again, I should become interested in the arts that add beauty and grace, and dignity in human personality, – music, sculpture, painting, architecture, literature. The world that will receive me when we are through with this college business will be a world of human beings, and therefore will always find joy and satisfaction in what are called the fine arts.
But the greatest of all the arts is the art of noble living. I should for this reason do what I could in the process of my education to keep an unshaken faith in the enduring values of the ancient moralities – truth, honesty, honor, justice, kindness, and… gentleness of spirit.
What I have been trying to say is that I should not be bothered about what the critics seem to worry over, their lack of approval of the kind of education I am exposed to, their excitement over what the world is going to do to me and I to it,- if I were now a student in college. Rather, I should lay hold with all my soul on these simple, essential, fundamental things, and gallantly face whatever the future may have in store for me.
Pictures: Snyder, the front gates, as drawn by student William Gladden.