Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/104

 changing seats or books or getting into more comfortable positions or lighter attire. They stick at nothing long; they carry nothing to a conclusion. They chatter and hop about like wrens, and all the while they deceive themselves with the delusion that they are getting their lessons, and having done this sort of thing for four years they will go to college with the idea that they know how to study when all they really know is how to fool away time.

The opportunities in college to waste time are infinite, and some of them are so alluring, and others seem to contain so many elements of real improvement and training to the individual that it is not strange that the freshman, ignorant of the exactions of college life, should fall into error. The fraternity freshman, surrounded as he usually is by a large group of congenial companions is more likely than other first year men to fall into this error of misusing his time. If he desires to go down town there is always some one to bear him company; if he draws up his chair to join the circle of fireside bums, there is so much that is interesting going on that it is hard at the proper time to break away; even if he goes to his room to study, there is his roommate usually to engage him in conversation. The fact that in most fraternities the freshmen are sent to their study-rooms at half