Graduate

“ What do I mean by graduates? Why, that they have made love to her, and would be entitled to her diploma, if she gave a parchment to each one of them who had had the courage to face the inevitable. About the Counsellor I am, as I have said, in doubt. Who wrote that “I Like You and I Love You,” which we found in the sugar-bowl the other day? Was it a graduate who had felt the “icy dagger,” or only a candidate for graduation who was afraid of it? ”

“ And now the undergraduate will emphasize study. But a sharp line must be drawn between study that looks forward merely to the A.B. degree as the end of schooling and the beginning of business, and study that is a part of professional training, that looks forward to some professional degree at Commencement or to matriculation in a graduate school. ”

“ LETTERS OF CONGRATULATION (On Graduation) My dear ————,
How happy I am to hear that you have so successfully terminated your High School course. You surely deserve the best the world can offer for you have earned it by hard conscientious study. Please accept my congratulations.
Sincerely yours,
[299]
My dear ————,
It was with the greatest pleasure I learned that you were to graduate this year. How much it must mean to you to finally hold in your hand the diploma for which you have labored so faithfully for four years. May I extend my hearty congratulations. ”

“ Gentlemen Graduates, not only the necessity of bearing in mind the charge given you on receiving your degrees,—namely, that you ever in your lives and conversation show yourselves worthy of the same—but that you bear in mind that when you can place after your names the letters of your degree your education is not finished—in truth, it has but just begun. ”

“ Three elements compose the graduate college. Foremost is a body of first rate professors, to be added to others now in the faculty, interesting men, scholars of high power, eminent in their subjects, and able to waken young men. ”

“ We would by no means interfere with this graduation in the schools; but, in addition to this, there ought, we think, to be some goal of more elevated attainment, which might excite the attention and emulation of those whose opportunities admit of their being well educated. Let it bear the title of Bachelor of Arts, or Master of Arts, or graduate, and, if a definite meaning be affixed to it by the college authorities, it cannot fail to be as well understood as the unmeaning terms, sophomore, freshman, senior-wrangler, &c. ”

“ In 1858 I received the degree of D. S. from the Lawrence Scientific School, and thereafter remained on the rolls of the university as a resident graduate. ”

“ The college, moreover, should start the graduate interest in philanthropic and serious enterprises which in themselves furnish suitable as well as pleasing relaxation to hundreds of American university men. ”

“ Life is my college. May I graduate well, and earn some honors! ”

“ Indeed, the mark of the undergraduate almost covers them, especially of the undergraduate as he fondly imagines himself in his callow days and as he is foolishly instructed to regard himself by the more vinous and more hilarious of the old graduates who annually come back to a college to offer themselves—though this is not their conscious purpose—as an object lesson in the loud triviality peculiar and traditional to such hours of reunion. ”

“ If he continues as he has begun, he will be surprised to find how soon he will be able to instruct, on one subject at least, the college graduate, unless that graduate has happily continued as a fad what he once perfunctorily acquired. ”

“ When your parents do the best they can for you, sez I, you ought to try to do the best you can for yourself, sez I, which is the best return you can make them, sez I.”
“To do the best you can for them, I should think would be the first thing to think about, and, likewise, best return to make them. But now I’ll go on with my letter:
“‘The girls expect to graduate at the academic commencement, on the first of June’—graduate at the commencement! 31I thought pupils graduated at the end!—‘after which we expect to come down to Mondreer for the summer, previous to going to Europe. ”

“ Once in college, let us subject these boys to solid and stiff examinations. Those who fail, if they are in the graduating class, should not graduate that year, no matter what great man or great woman may intercede, scold, or shed tears in their behalf. ”

“ It is not strange, therefore, that many of the professors pursued reputable occupations during their odd hours or that they took students to board. We hear to-day of frequent illustrations of the pursuit of knowledge under difficulty, but certainly during the ages to which I have referred the ardent student, were he undergraduate or professor, put up with an amount of hardship, meagre fare, and trouble of all kinds which would stagger most of the young men of to-day. ”

“ The Master of the College, or "Head of the House," is a D.D., who has been a Fellow. He is the supreme ruler within the college Trails, and moves about like an Undergraduate's deity, keeping at an awful distance from the students, and not letting himself be seen too frequently even at chapel. Besides his fat salary and house, he enjoys many perquisites and privileges, not the least of which is that of committing matrimony.—Bristed's Five Years in an Eng. ”

“ No wonder that at commencement time particularly, at a moment of success and hope, the instinct of the young graduate is to hear the call to service, and the instinct of the speaker is to sound it.
Yet some of us hesitate. So long as the mind is enclosed within the happy commencement scene, the circle of well-intending graduates, affectionate parents, and earnest teachers, it is easy to say "Come into the world now, young man, and begin your life-long service ”

“ Now the student, a young man of about twenty-one or twenty-two years, is supposed to be prepared, either to go into the world as a fairly well-educated citizen, or to continue his studies for a professional career. He finds the graduate schools of the universities ready to give him courses which lead to the degree of M.A. or Ph.D., and prepare him for the higher kind of teaching. ”

“ If that training has been successful, your future lives will prove. As you have living examples of graduates of former years, many of whom I am pleased to see around me, leading noble, pure, and honorable lives, filling the highest stations in State service, and in the learned professions, with the unqualified approbation and respect of all who know them, so we hope you will serve as examples worthy of imitation to those who come after you, and become men of light and leading in your generation. ”

“ Many of these parents, whose hard-working lives have always spelled duty, choose each year to beat their way against rigid economy, penury, and bitter loss, that their sons may possess what they themselves never had, a college education. And [9-11] when we have found, below all his boyish pranks, dissimulations, and masqueradings, the true undergraduate, we may also discern some of the pervasive influences which are to-day shaping life upon this Western Continent; for the undergraduate is a true glass to give back to the nation its own image. ”

“ The regulations governing admission to the graduate school, and in particular to candidacy for the competitive fellowships, the awards of which depend entirely on scholarship and ability, attracted to the school an increasing number of select advanced students in liberal studies. ”

“ How long will the extraordinary excesses of a learned funct be suffered to disgrace college? Is Doctor —— to be permitted to exhibit an example of more riotous insubordination than would be endured in an undergraduate? ”

“ The characteristics of a college course demanded by our American undergraduates is determined by two things; first, by the character of the man who is to be educated, and second, by the kind of world in which the man is to live and work. ”

“ There is another topic, one which has been before alluded to by those who have occupied this chair, that we do not find those who succeed in their educational career, and become our graduates, following up their education after they leave College. ”

“ Those of the second class are largely recruited from the ranks of College graduates, who rely upon their University course as preparation for the profession of teaching, and amongst whom the idea of a special training for their work has only here and there been awakened. ”

“ Here and there are knots of Bachelors of Arts, in their ampler gowns with fur-lined hoods, some only removed by a brief three years from their undergraduate days, others who have evidently allowed a much longer period to pass before returning [Pg 2] to bring their academic career to its full and complete end. ”

“ Such is the simple creed of the undergraduate. If he satisfies neither of the above requirements, then he recognises, with greater or less sadness, that he is an ordinary man, the "average undergraduate." ”

“ The graduate spends at least three years in study as a specialist, very frequently including a year or more at some European university. On the scientific side, at least, this work is severe, leaving no time for other occupation except at the cost of a dangerous expenditure of energy. Preparation for college teaching is more exacting than that for any other profession, medicine not excepted. ”

“ Personally I know many hundreds of these graduates, and have corresponded with more than a thousand; through others I have followed carefully the life-work of scores; I have taught some of them and some of the pupils whom they have taught, lived in homes which they have builded, and looked at life through their eyes. ”

“ These graduates have organized themselves into Alumni and Alumnæ Associations and maintain their fellowship, principally in social, but partly in educative work. The school button or pin and the alumni pin prove that these young folks are quite as human as those of other schools and colleges. ”

“ These were graduates from representative institutions, they were trained in the various crafts, arts, and professions, and were neat in appearance, responsive, and fired with enthusiasm. Great numbers of those of whom we have been speaking, however, had never attended school a day in their lives. ”

“ While it is, for obvious reasons, impossible to give the names of all graduates who have achieved a certain measure of distinction, a few who have attained special prominence in their special fields may be mentioned. ”

“ In the professional degrees the rate of success has fluctuated to a remarkable extent^ as is too well known, for instance, to recent candidates for the degree in law. Having worked with and watched the work of men, some of whom are proficients of the pre-University High School and others are Graduates of the University, I gratefully acknow- ledge that I have found both classes equally efiicient and equally honorable. The proficients in their day had an advan- tage which graduates cannot share. ”

“ A man degrading for any other reason cannot go out afterwards in honors."—Five Years in an Eng. Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 98.
I could choose the year below without formally degrading.—Ibid., p. 157.
DEGREE. A mark of distinction conferred on students, as a testimony of their proficiency in arts and sciences; giving them a kind of rank, and entitling them to certain privileges. This is usually evidenced by a diploma. Degrees are conferred pro meritis on the alumni of a college; or they are honorary tokens of respect, conferred on strangers of distinguished reputation. ”

“ I have heard of a man who had one foot in the grave, but here was a man who had one foot in heaven. Dear friend, and my father's friend, friend of my youth, and all my later years, teacher, counselor, encourager, model of my student life, to whom my heart was knit in all the ardor of the first enthusiasm over the idea of going to college, to whom my obligations are beyond computation, Thou hast thyself gone to sit at the feet of the Great Teacher. ”

“ From every college comes the Dean in his Master's gown and hood, or if he be a Doctor, in the scarlet and grey of one of the new Doctorates, in the dignified scarlet and black of Divinity, or in the bold blending of scarlet and crimson which marks Medicine and Law. College servants, with their arms full of gowns and hoods, will be seen in the background, waiting to assist in the academic robing of their former masters, and to pocket the 'tips' which time-honoured custom prescribes. ”

“ You will hear more good things on the outside of a stage-coach from London to Oxford than if you were to pass a twelvemonth with the undergraduates, or heads of colleges, of that famous university; ”

“ When, after some years of study, a student was examined by the professors, he was, if successful, admitted to the corporation of teachers and became a master himself. What we call a degree to-day was originally, in the mediæval universities, nothing more than the qualification to teach. But in the thirteenth century many began to desire the honorable title of master or doctor (which is only the Latin word for teacher) who did not care to become professors in our sense of the word. ”

“ Heroes and scholars have gone forth from their studies here, into the great field of the world, to seek their fortunes, and to conquer and be conquered. As I surveyed the exterior of the different Colleges, I could here and there see the reflection of the light from the window of some student, who was busy at his studies, or throwing away his time over some trashy novel, too many of which find their way into the trunks or carpet bags of the young men on setting out for College. ”

“ A representation was made by my master, that he saw in me, indications of qualities and talents which pointed to some better station, than that of a village apothecary, and he recommended the sphere of my education to be enlarged; that I should be removed to a great school, and finally to the university. Whether I should have been more useful to the world, or intrinsically more happy in myself, if the humbler path had been pursued which was first chalked out for me, He only knows from whom no secrets are hid. ”