Liberal Education

Excerpts from the 1925-26 Ashland University handbook for students:

There is nothing like getting a good start, and your Freshman year is the time when you lay the foundations of your college career. Remember that your class work comes first as it is in reality the primary object of your entrance into college. Do not undertake too much at first or let your interests become too widely scattered lest your efforts come to naught.

From “Hints to Freshman” from the same handbook:

• Enter college with a purpose and determination to accomplish something.
  
• Don’t hesitate to ask questions. We learn all things through interrogation and observation.
  
• Remember it is easier to keep up than to catch up.
  
• Don’t feel yourself too big at first–leave room to grow.
  
• If you feel like cutting class, don’t. Every hour is of paramount importance to you.
  
• If you’re broke, go out and earn some money: don’t borrow it.
  
• If you get homesick, get busy and forget it.
  
• If you are punished for a misdeed, take your medicine like a man and don’t whine about injustice.
  
• Study–you’ll be a bore to your Professors and yourself if you don’t.
  
• Abraham Lincoln said: “Success consists not so much of sitting up nights as being awake in the daytime.”

From “Pointers” in the 1907-08 handbook:

• Do not gossip.
  
• Do not give up.
  
• Do not cut classes.
  
• Do not be a “knocker.”
  
• Do not loaf in students’ rooms.
  
• Do not neglect to write home.
  
• Do not be in haste to make friendships.
  
• Do not look for “cinches”; they are not here.
  
• Do not be ashamed of things your father and mother hold sacred.
  
• Do not be narrow, but cultivate a broad-minded, sympathetic spirit.