WASTING TIME

For over two weeks during the midyear period almost every undergraduate is a "grind". He buys him an eye-shade, locks his study door, and with self-righteous ardor applies himself for long hours to his books. He forsakes his club, turns his back resolutely upon his telephone, and puts off answering his mail.

Only at such temporary periods of abnormal activity can most of us realize what the normal life of the undergraduate actually is. When faced with the necessity of doing half a year's reading in two days, the student is ready to admit that he has wasted a great deal of time during the fall term. He probably will be forced to admit that he has done considerably less than the utopian five or six hours' work a day.

Unquestionably some of this is purely wasted time. But some of it, whether spent at the club or with some young lady, he would hesitate to call wasted, even from his new character as a "grind". To him it appears a definite part of a young man's development, a fact which the hallucination of youth allows him to appraise.

He will also admit that he does not like the life of a "grind". His own feeling of reaction after such periods of study shows him that to the normal young man such application is unnatural. He comes to the logical conclusion that while he may have wasted time away from his books, the "grind" is also wasting a good deal of valuable time over those same books.