Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/111

 in the evening, and then had gone to bed early he might have learned something. As it was he never had time for anything, never got anywhere, never seemed to be awake. He utilized time badly while priding himself that he was working hard.

"We send our freshmen up to their rooms at half past seven every study night," the fraternity man proudly asserts in proof of the fact that a fraternity house is a good place for a freshman to be in; but what do the freshmen do after they get to their rooms? Some of them study it is true, but more of them waste their time in unconcentrated effort, get down to their work about the time they ought to be going to bed, oversleep in the morning, and miss an eight o'clock because they have been up studying so late the night before. The man who got the highest grades of any student I have known in thirty years seldom studied more than two or three hours during an evening, but when he went to his books he banished every other thought and occupation; dynamite could not have turned him from the solution of a problem in calculus or from the writing of an exercise in rhetoric after he once got set at it. He wasted no time in looking for his pipe or discussing politics or the last dance; he had learned concentration, and so the freshman must learn if he is to get the most possible out of his time.