ON STUDYING.

The amount of time wasted by students because of unintelligent methods of study is doubtless enormous. The average undergraduate takes his work as doses of bitter medicine to be swallowed indiscriminately at more or less frequent intervals. Given a book, he dully reads the sentences, exercising on selection, but expecting that in some mysterious way he will absorb knowledge by the mere conning of the words. At a lecture he does not know how to condense points made into intelligible, concise statements suitable for notes. If the lecturer is not one who carefully labels all his topics and introduces them with "first, secondly, thirdly, etc.", the student is often at a complete loss.

Indeed, the average college man is a victim of what Tolstoy termed "the school state of mind",--a state in which every thing scholarly appears a-priori difficult, and the student regards himself not an eager seeker for truth, but a patient forced to receive a distasteful pellet of learning. Probably most men actually apply more alert thought to choosing their clothing and food than to their properly-intellectual tasks.

The trouble lies in the fact that most students do not know how to study. As Freshmen they are plunged into seas of work, without receiving any careful instruction on methods of doing it. They flounder for a time, until they evolve inefficient, make-shift ways for themselves. Some, not so fortunate, do not learn the rough-and-ready lessons of experience soon enough, and their college careers find early ends.

Men should be taught first of all how to study. Men who have taken courses in the Education department speak in glowing terms of the light which has been thrown for them on methods of work. Cannot some of this inspiration be imparted to Freshmen? Lectures on study could be given at intervals in the mid-week meetings of English A, thus requiring no re-adjustment of schedules. And the intellectual life of many men would be put at the outset on a more efficient basis.