Bateman, says that when he was a student he could saw two cords of wood in a day, but that if he was idle one day he could not saw four cords the next day. If you are to be successful students, you will find your time pretty full. Resist encroachments upon it. Keep a little in advance of your work. Gain your leisure before you take it. (b) Learn concentration. If you can prepare a lesson thoroughly in one hour, don't spend two hours upon it. Compel your mind to put forth its best energy. Permit no interruption while you are engaged in study. I once saw a student completely absorbed in his work while five or six fellows were lounging and chatting in his room, but even he would have found it easier and more beneficial to study alone. The habit of two or more students getting out their lesson together does not tend to develop the best working ability. (c) Be systematic. Have regular hours for study, regular hours for exercise, regular hours for sleep. Do not depend upon impulse, but rather train your impulse, your interest in the thing to be done, to come to your aid at the right time. If you cultivate the habit of devoting the same hours each day to the preparation of certain lessons, reading in the library at certain hours and having fixed hours for all your work, you will find the interest rising at the right time to make your work easy, as surely as your appetite will return at meal-time. Train yourself to succeed, not to fail. If you cannot surmount obstacles in one way, try another. It is the bulldog grip that wins. When the cultured young Governor Russell of Massachusetts said at a Harvard dinner that he would rather hear that Harvard had won in an intercollegiate game of football than in an intellectual contest, he did not intend to disparage high scholarship or literary excellence, (d) Don't be baffled. but rather to exalt that strength of will which is a prerequisite to success in any undertaking. If you have convictions, live up to them. If life presents a problem, solve it. If tasks and difficulties rise mountain-high, tunnel through them. There are few things which work inspired by faith and hope cannot accomplish. "To thine own self be true And it must follow as the day the night "A day for toil, an hour for sport." R. W. EMERSON. "Our pleasures and our discontents Are rounds by which we may ascend." 66 H. W. LONGFELLOW. If those who are the enemies of innocent amusements had the direction of the world, they would take away the spring and youth, the former from the year, the latter from the human life." BALZAC. |