“Well, our first hour examination showed that we must remember the instructor’s words, that it wasn’t enough to imbed them in hieroglyphics. Allusions that I had considered mere ornaments I soon found ought to have been taken seriously. Little innocent references to some reserved book were of more importance than hours of lectures. Alas! alas!”
Julia smiled at her expression of sorrow.
“You need not laugh,” said Clarissa. “I had meant to do most of my reading next summer, and I had not even taken the trouble to note the names of the books referred to. But I find that having electives does not mean that you can elect to study or not, just as you please. The mid-years will be serious enough, judging by the samples we have had.”
Clarissa was not the only Freshman to find difficulty in accustoming herself to Radcliffe methods. Many others, unused to the lecture system, had rested too securely in the hope that before the mid-years they could make up all deficiencies. As the college year went on they were bound to find, like all preceding Freshmen, that lectures in the end were far more stimulating than recitations from even the best of text-books, and in the course of time, too, even the dullest was likely to acquire the art of successful note-taking.
The hour examinations at irregular intervals before Christmas were often rude awakeners for careless girls. Others were agreeably surprised to find their marks better than they had hoped.
“It’s uncertainty that kills one,” said Clarissa. “I mean to work so that my mid-years will give me ‘B,’ or at any rate ‘C’ in English. The warning, you will see, shall not have been in vain. I used to think that I knew something about Rhetoric, but it seems that I was wrong, though I studied it years ago in the High School.”
Although Clarissa’s rather original manner of expressing herself did not wholly meet the approval of her English instructor, since the first examination he had expressed a certain restrained approval of some of her written work.
In November even the shyest Freshmen had begun to find their place at Radcliffe, and to feel that they had some individuality. The classes, relatively small compared with Harvard, enabled the members of each class to know one another by sight and name, even if the acquaintance went no further. But the new girls were impressed by the fact that intimacies in no way followed class lines. The elective system made it possible in many courses for Freshmen and Seniors to sit side by side, nor did a Senior lose dignity by associating with the lower classes. Clarissa constantly commented on this evidence of a spirit so different from that to which she had been accustomed at her Western college.
Pamela accepted everything at Cambridge as a matter of course. Nothing seemed strange to her because she had expected everything to be strange. Whatever was, was right for Pamela, so far as Radcliffe and Cambridge were concerned, and she lacked Clarissa’s bubbling energy, which constantly sought some object to reform.
“I can’t say that I disapprove of the present state of things, though I really cannot understand it. Here we are in the same town with hundreds—yes, thousands—of students, and yet we see few of them at close range, and then those we know are only our brothers or cousins or something of that kind.”