AS TO DRESS
VARSITY AND PREP-SCHOOL FASHIONS
ON'T wear your Prep-school hat-band, or flash your High-school Fraternity pin upon your almost manly chest. These are stock idiosyncrasies of the Freshman. Just remember that School fashions do not prevail at College.
THE "SPORTY" DRESSER
Don't dress too "sporty," during the first term. The effects you try to imitate at this period of the game are apt to be only the superficial and amusing ones.
A SHORT WORD ABOUT LONG HAIR
Don't wear long hair. Hair, if left to grow as it listeth, may attain to a surprising length within a single season. The Freshman year is not the time to test the accuracy of this statement. Wait till you are a Sophomore; then you won't care to. Remember that long hair is the Poet's privilege (though not always proof of a Poet). To wear long hair, you had better take out a Poet's license. In this respect a dog-license will do if you fail to qualify as Poet.
WHISKERS AND SUCH
Don't feel it incumbent upon you to wear a beard or a moustache, if you happen to have raised one on the farm or in England, during the summer. Whiskers are the plus sign of masculinity. Upper-classmen do not appreciate them in Freshmen.
ABOUT THOSE SPARKLERS
Don't wear too much jewelry; as an over-amount of it suggests trips to places where they loan money.
DONT DRESS TOO SPORTY
HORSY ORNAMENTS
Don't affect stick-pins bearing large horses' heads or horseshoes, thinking these will demonstrate that you keep a gig. The horsy ornament connotes the coachman's white tie and the odor of the stable.
THAT CANE
Don't carry a cane in your Freshman year; something is very likely to happen to it.
THAT TALL HAT
Don't be found displaying a tall hat. A tall hat is a mighty nice thing for Sister's wedding at home; but better leave it there. Its dignity is liable to fade, like the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome. It was only because those nations got too chesty, you remember, that the Vandals of old worried them.
CRAZY MEN—CRAZY CLOTHES
Don't think that crazy or odd clothes are necessarily "College" clothes. Lots of College men do wear crazy clothes; but it isn't so much because they're College men, as because they're crazy.
SANE DRESS
Don't forget to dress neatly and up to your means. You owe it to yourself to dress as well as you can. I don't mean that owing this to yourself should necessitate your continually owing something to your tailor. You do not owe it to yourself to owe anybody.
[AS TO DINING]
YOUR DINING PLACE
ON'T begin by resorting habitually to the Quick Lunch. Nobody ever made friends at a Quick Lunch, except with the waitresses. Select a good place where there are lots of fellows whom you will see continually. You ought to pick out some good friends from among them.
YOUR TABLE
Don't attempt, in a large dining hall, to get a place at a society, club, or athletic table for which you have not yet qualified. You are liable to queer yourself from the start.
TABLE TALK
Don't try continually to air the sum of knowledge which you are just assimilating. There are few things more pathetic than the first-year chemist who keeps asking you at table to "pass the NaCl," or the fledgling psychologist who would try to prove that bread-and-butter is matter for the mind and not for the stomach.
DONT MONOPOLIZE THE CONVERSATION AT THE TABLE
LOCAL EGOTISM
Don't keep telling how they do things in that part of the country which you come from. The assumption is, that since you came to College, you are willing to learn something of how they do things here.
LISTENING TO OTHERS
Don't monopolize the conversation at the table, especially if there are older men around. You'll get yourself snubbed if you talk too much about yourself. Fellows don't care much whether your grandfather kept a brake and ten horses, or drove a "shay" over the plank-road. Be a good listener. Then, too, older men like to be listened to. The chances are you will learn a sight more by hearing them than they will by hearing you.
KNOCKING THE GRUB
Don't continually find fault with the things you have to eat. Act as if you were used to eating away from home. Half the time the jokes you make at the expense of the food come merely from an uncontrollable desire to air your wit. "Knocking the grub" doesn't require half so much brains or individuality as shutting up about it.
[AS TO LECTURES AND STUDIES]
ATTENDANCE AT LECTURES
ON'T forget to attend a large per cent. of your lectures. The information dispensed in lectures is often to be found invaluable in passing the Examinations.
CHOOSING COURSES
Don't let yourself be mesmerized into taking a lot of things you feel a positive disinclination for. Many a Freshman has spoiled his first year in this way; and, failing to pass, has left College and become a street-car conductor or a clerk.
"SNAP" COURSES
Don't mistake the willingness to accept a "snap" course for a startling aptitude for a subject.
ELECTIVE SYSTEM
Don't abuse the Elective System if you are privileged to be at a College where it is employed. It is a system which presupposes your own interest in your intellectual welfare. It is too easy to fill up with a lot of unrelated subjects. You may say, "But I desire a broad education." Very good. Did you ever go to a circus? There the prettiest feats are performed upon the broad, spacious back of one horse. The rider gets the broadest-backed critter he can find that will keep moving. Those who ride two and three horses take a risk. In College you may find that when you try to do the intellectual split, you're liable to fall down between your horses.
ABOUT MEETING PROFESSORS
Don't neglect any honest opportunities you may have to make friends with an Instructor or a Professor. Meeting Teachers represents a privilege and not always necessarily a pull. As for knowing Professors intimately, few do, except other Professors. As for their knowing us intimately, it might seem as if this seldom happens, until it comes time to expel us.
MALINGERING
Don't try to fool the College Doctor into believing that you can't go to lectures, or are going to die, because you've sprained your left thumb. Generally, the College Doctor is a shrewd man, or he would not be the College Doctor.
ABOUT REQUIRED READING
Don't fail to make a list of the required reading in any course. And do some of it—say, a little more than will enable you merely to pass the Exam. It is barely possible that the reading you have done in connection with your College courses will some day prove you an educated man. As for doing all the reading that all the Professors require—well, a fellow must sleep and eat.
WORKING FOR EXAMS
Don't think that Exams can be passed without any preparation. It takes some. The minimum has not yet been determined; nor has the maximum. The middlemum has even been known to vary, according as the instructor imagines that the crowd is or is not taking the course as a snap. The little birdies are surely in league with the Faculty.
INTELLECTUAL NARCOTICS
Don't rely upon special tutors to pass all your courses. It's lazy and not entirely self-respecting. When our friend Gulliver went to Laputa, he met certain Teachers who gave their pupils small intellectual wafers. These they swallowed upon empty stomachs. As the wafers digested, the tincture mounted to the pupil's brain, bearing the proposition along with it. The same system of cramming exists today; only it doesn't always work as advertised. A fellow resorts to special tutors when he has lost confidence, and needs an intellectual narcotic. Special tutors represent the drug-capsule of learning. Why be a dope-fiend?
IN THE EXAMS
Don't try in your Exams to make a hit by writing long papers. The Exam is not an endurance contest. Somehow, long papers don't take, unless there is some sense in everything you have written. If you don't believe this, try it and find out.
PREDIGESTED INFORMATION
Don't rely wholly upon typewritten notes to get through your courses. Many College Professors show no quarter to those whom they ascertain to be addicted to this predigested form of information. Often the Professor's life-specialty is the tracing of literary works to their sources; so be careful. Better take notes in lectures; if this serve no other purpose, 'twill keep you awake.
PUTTING OFF WORK
Don't put off that long piece of written work till the night before it is due. A piece of work about which you have been warned months beforehand, can't be done between 8 p.m. and 3 a.m. Here "rush orders," contrary to the rule, spoil. If you come up to the scratch as you should, in the matter of long pieces of written work, the Instructor will almost forget how dog-goned lazy you have been all along in the little things.
IDLING
Don't idle away time to such an extent that you get a reputation as an idler, either among your friends, or with the members of the Faculty. You'll find such a reputation hard to live down. Notwithstanding the fact that everybody is supposed to come by a love of Learning in College, there are some things which the Faculty will not take for granted. With the Faculty, the chronic idler will find that his name is anathema, or Dennis at least.
DONT FAIL TO KEEP IN MIND THE STEPS OF DESCENT
THE DESCENT TO AVERNUS
Don't fail to keep in mind the flight of steps which represents the descent from the plane of regular work. It goes something like this: work, slack work, probation, special probation, then, "I am sorry to inform you that the Faculty has decided that you are no longer needed to ornament the College," etc. After which, it is the greased-slide, down and out, so to speak. In other words, you are about to feel the thrill of Academic life along your keel for the last time. Facilis descensus Averni: Avernus being the cold, cold world, and the bother of having to explain to one's relations and friends in the home town how it all happened.
THE COLLEGE OFFICE
Don't show disrespect or contempt for the College Dean, or for the retinue within his gates. Once you "queer" yourself with the College Office, you are on dangerous footing, and the College Degree you seek is no longer seen to be "constant as the northern star." Keep the Degree in mind; hitch your wagon to it. But don't get too ambitious in the way of Degrees. We once heard of a fellow who was called up and given the Third Degree by the Faculty, without ever being graduated.