Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/261

Rh Psychology has thoroughly demonstrated that we can consciously attend economically to only one set of ideas at a time. Even much note taking in class is an uneconomical distraction. The faithful but misguided student frequently attempts to take down every word uttered. He deceives himself, for what he hopes to carry under his arm he should have in his head. No wonder that sometimes the less scrupulous one who cuts classes and borrows notes instead of writing them fares about as well.

In student life it is important to thoroughly master a task as speedily as possible. To skim over a lesson and leave it without mastery is wasteful. The process may be repeated a dozen times in this way and then be only half learned. Hence, "whatsoever thou findest to do, do it with all thy mind and with all thy heart and with all thy strength." In mastering things for keeps two attitudes are necessary—interest and attention. Attention is the mother of memory; interest is the mother of attention. Hence, if you would secure memory, you must capture the mother and the grandmother. It is the business of us all to be interested in what we do, and it is unethical to regard our work as drudgery. I sometimes say to students, you never will be great successes as teachers until your work has come to occupy all your waking moments and even your hours of sleep. It must be your life. If you wish to know what you are interested in just catch yourselves suddenly occasionally, when you have no prescribed task, to see what you are thinking about. Those great dominating, insistent ideas indicate your real interests.

May I say a word on the ethics of cramming for examinations? The method is a delusion and a snare. Ideas are not grasped, associations are not made, brain tracks are not made permanent, and even though the student might pass an examination on such possessions, like the notes of an insolvent bank they are found to be worthless trash when put to real use. Instead of wisdom more to be prized than fine gold, such a process may leave one with only bogus certificates. Make your mental acquisitions absolutely your own while going over the subject day by day, take ten hours of sleep before every examination day, and the results need not be feared. In trying to make possessions most permanent and most economically I give frequently the following recipe: Study your lesson as if you expected to teach it. When you can teach it to some one else you possess it. Frequently actually try to teach your lesson. If your room-mate will not submit, inflict it upon an imaginary pupil. Some one said, "I do not lecture to instruct others, but to clear up my own ideas."

Although young shoulders should not become bowed down by an overweening sense of responsibility, yet it is sinful not to impress the young with the importance of the morning of life. The old adage