The day I decided to go to college, twelve months before I entered, I was financially about even with the world. By good luck and close saving during this following year my savings amounted to five hundred dollars, which represented my total capital when I entered the University of North Carolina. As a freshman, I had very few opportunities to make money, and by the end of the year my capital was reduced to one hundred and fifty dollars. A position the following summer on a weekly newspaper netted expenses and experience, and I therefore started back the next year with only the hundred and fifty.
Expenses were provided for this year by means of work with the University Press and the management of a boarding house. Newspaper reporting furnished a few dollars and some good experience, and a campaign for subscriptions to a popular magazine was also productive. About this time I found it necessary to use my original hundred and fifty for an object not connected with college, and so it was paid out. But the end of the session found me practically even financially and with all debts paid.
At the beginning of my junior year, I had less than one dollar capital. The management of the Press was given me at this time at a salary of sixty-five dollars a month, and I continued to manage a boarding house. A number of side schemes, including the management of telegraphic athletic reports, selling advertising novelties, newspaper reporting, an interest in a fruit store, etc., brought in irregular but substantial returns. During this year I managed to meet all expenses and save about three hundred dollars. This amount added to a lot of nerve with which I borrowed twelve hundred more, gave me capital for an investment, which later netted a profit of two hundred and fifty dollars.
During the following summer, I spent the three hundred in traveling and entered my senior year without a cent but the two hundred and fifty, which was tied up in such a way that I couldn’t get it for some time. I leased the print shop this year and did other work such as selling shoes, advertisements, visiting cards, etc. The larger part of my time this year being taken up with some of the more strenuous “college activities,” my income was cut down and it was necessary for me to borrow less than a hundred dollars from the University. At graduation, I could have paid off all debts, and had left two hundred dollars or more.
FINANCIAL STATEMENT.
| Total amount spent during four yearswith amount of scholarship included (time includes three vacations) | $2,700 | |
| Cash on hand at beginning | $500 | |
| Value of Scholarship | 240 | 740 |
| Total | $740 | |
| Balance | $1,960 | |
| Investment (later realized) | 250 | |
| Total earned during college course. | $2,210 |
From this statement it is clear that I spent much more money than was necessary. Five hundred dollars could have been saved out of this amount if I had cut out a few of the luxuries, but as the money was earned, I felt free to spend it.
My conclusions and advice are that any boy can go through college if he is prepared to enter and is willing to work. The working college boy is the happiest because he is always busy and doesn’t have time to get blue. He can enjoy his pleasures without thinking that he will some day have to pay the money back. His activities are so diversified that they do not become monotonous, and making money becomes to him as much sport as playing baseball. He can go broke for three weeks and sell a few books to raise money for a midnight lunch and have more fun out of it than another boy with a barrel of money and a new automobile. All it takes for a boy to go through college without money is nerve to try it, grit to stick to it, and a happy attitude toward life to enjoy it.
Hartsville, S. C.