Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/117

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much respect and consideration as other men; I have seldom been able to see that he is entitled to more than are other men who are doing their college duties well. Self-support in college is not a matter either for self-congratulation or self-humiliation. The man who has to work is not the subject for special sympathy or special favors. He ought not to ask or expect to be exempted from the duties which fall to all students; he should not be annoyed if his omissions and his irregularities are looked upon in the same light as are those of other students. The young fellow who expects the college authorities to grant him special privileges, who thinks himself entitled to a larger number of cuts, or to longer vacations than those normally granted by the college simply because he works, is lacking a little. It is the man who meets the conditions of life into which he goes without complaint and without asking for favor that has the right stuff in him.

There is a quite general feeling among those who have never given the subject any serious thought or study that the man who works his way through college is more likely than other men to succeed in later life. I do not believe this, and I should be very glad to believe it if the facts warranted it. Men go to college for the training of the mind. The very fact that the self-supporting undergraduate must spend hours each day in earning a living, keeps him from the very thing for which he is making his chief sacrifice, and takes away from the very preparation which is fitting him for success in after life. The man in college who meets the necessity for self-support cleverly and skillfully, who uses his brains to