Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/101



If there is one excuse offered more often than another for failure on our part to accomplish a result or to accept an obligation, or to perform a service it is the conventional one that we have no time. The more shiftless we are, the fewer obligations and duties we have, the more convinced we are that it would be disastrous if not impossible for us to take on anything more. St. Peter, if he holds up any eager entrant to the pearly gates with an inquiry as to why he has not accomplished more is met, I have no doubt, with the ready reply that the sinner in question did all that he had time to do. I have scarcely ever talked with a freshman who wished to omit some unpleasant duty or to get out of some irksome task or to drop some uninteresting study who did not allege that his main object was to get more time to put on his studies. When I propounded the direct question as to when he studies and just how much time he does actually give to the business, he seldom if ever knows, and for this there is a very good reason.

"Why did you fail?" I asked Hawkins who managed last semester to get by with only two hours in military and physical training out of a schedule of eighteen hours.