A Word for Freshmen

Last week, as they started their higher education, the nation's freshmen got some counsel from three college presidents: P: Go slow, warned Brown's Dr. Henry M. Wriston, in choosing a vocation. "At your age," Wriston said, "worry about how you are going to make your living leads to impulsive selections . . . Premature choices tend to lead you into, and freeze you in, occupations which will be inadequately rewarding spiritually, which may curb mental enjoyment." Most men in middle life are bored with their jobs because they "selected their vocation in a search for security instead of adventure." P: Seek maturity, advised Dartmouth's John Sloan Dickey, through a "liberating education." In the modern world, "the immature are dismayed with disappointment and they demand answers which promise quick, sure, painless solutions. The immature are sure that only a knave or a fool . . . could have made a losing bet. The mature mind resists the search for panaceas and scapegoats . . ." P: Overspecialization is what worries Hamilton College's (Clinton, N.Y.) Robert Ward McEwen. Specialists tend to get so wrapped up in their own fields that they cannot function effectively as citizens, said Dr. McEwen. "Many people turn to murder mysteries for escape from their specialization. But escape is not enough. The most important danger ... is the myopia the specialist develops . . . The need today is for informed specialists . . . who can see the woods as well as the trees. None of you will gain omniscience at college, but you can learn how to live in an age of specialization."

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