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Among all the difficulties that the young aspirant for a college course has to encounter-and the number is by no means a small one-none can be said to give him more trouble and hard labor than that of studying understandingly and well amid the thousand and one pleasures and distractions that surround him. Study which is such a hard task for a school boy, becomes well nigh impossible to the college student who is no longer aided and guided by the walls of his home and the close scrutiny of his parents. No work can well be done by a man who allows himself to be blown hither and thither by the wind of popularity, or who is striving after good-fellowship with his class-mates. Not that a student should shut himself up in his rooms and so acquire monkish habits, lose in worldly knowledge to gain in knowledge of letters: yet at the first glance, this seems to be the only resort for those who wish to graduate from the college with a high standing on the class rank list. But there are men who seem to do both; who seem always ready to idle away an hour or two and yet always are on the rank lists. Such men appear wonders to their less favored classmates, who magnify into cleverness what is only the result of system. Yes, system applies as much to study as to business, or in fact any other vocation where time and orain must be limited in their use. Those exceptions in the eyes of their fellow students are not any more brilliantly endowed mentally than the rest, but they have one great superiority, that of knowing when and how to study. They portion out a certain amount of time each day to study and come what may, be it sport or exercise, they never fail to devote so much time to their studies, nor swerve in their duty. Thus, as it were, wedging their minds between two rigid walls of time they learn to accomplish more by thus limiting their opportunities of study than many who never cease to "grind" out the modicum of study required by the college regulations. The art of study is truly a great one, and an art that ought to be learned early in life, before, if possible, a man reaches college. To those who find it difficult to learn at so late a period, system is the only complete guide and aid. Study must be systematized, and thus half of its terror vanishes, and what was formerly a labor becomes a pleasure insomuch as the mind has not time to weary itself by needlessly plodding over lessons again and again.
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