PERSONAL ADJUSTMENT

A student entering Harvard, if he would make his college life both happy and profitable, must learn to reconcile seeming opposites. He must fit into the general scheme of things, and at the same time preserve his individuality. This is possible only where a spirit of broad tolerance prevails. Of this relation of Harvard to the individual, Dean Briggs has said:

"If a youth makes no friends in Cambridge, it is stupendously his own fault. I do not say that it is impossible for a Harvard student to go off by himself, dig a hole, lie down in it, and stay there--as he might not be able to do at a small college; I do say that those who affirm Harvard to be undemocratic or to value men for their money are either misinformed or defamatory. I could name plenty of men whom heaps of money did not save from social failure in Harvard College; and even more whom narrow means and want of family connection did not cut off from almost universal popularity. Students at Harvard, like students elsewhere--like all men, young or old--may misjudge their fellows, and, misjudging them, may use them cruelly. Yet even in such cases most of the blame belongs usually to the misjudged man. The student who bears himself well and does something for his class or his College is sure eventually to succeed. In the Freshman year a few prizes may be given to attractive loafers; but in the long run the Harvard public insists on some form of achievement. No individual who does anything worth doing, and does it with all his might, need be lost in the crowd at Harvard; and, taken for all in all, Harvard is the best place I know for the individual youth."