Page:The High School Boy and His Problems (1920).pdf/207

 can not risk. Sometime or other, if one is to learn to swim, he must be thrown into the water, and allowed to make the struggle alone. It is not likely to work any damage if some one is sufficiently interested to stand by and watch the struggle, and if drowning is imminent, which is seldom the case, to extend the helping hand. Usually the swimmer learns because he has to, as the muskrat was said to learn to climb a tree. Having been given preliminary training he must be allowed to work out his own methods; he may go under a few times and take in a little water, but he learns in the end to swim.

It is equally true of the college man. He must learn independence and self-reliance, and self-direction in the same way that young people learn to swim. One of the greatest sources of satisfaction to a college officer is to see how few suffer real disaster in the learning, and, when these unfortunate results do come, the trouble is quite as often at home as elsewhere, and would very likely have occurred no matter where the young man had been.

The matter of your associates is a serious one. The majority of the people with whom you are most intimately thrown you may very likely have ever seen before; of their habits and their ancestors you can at first know but little. You should use caution, if you are to choose wisely. You will be better off and safer in the end if you go slowly and look about you before you plunge into too fast friendships, either literally or figuratively. Your friends are most likely to be your making or your