06-24-2011, 04:32 PM
Memories are magical and precious, and so are hopes. To the young imagination of a schoolboy the very word college is wonderful and fascinating. It gives him delightful moments of wishful thinking. It fills his mind with beautiful images, hopes and ideas. He dreams of the day when he will join a college and live a free. Pleasant life. He knows that going to college will be the recognition of his independence and maturity. His parents will stop treating him like a child. They hopes of a schoolboy are not mere illusions. They very first thing a boy feels on entering a college is a sense of great relief from the pressures of school. There, he was treated as a child who must be pulled up, pushed around and forced into doing things which were considered good for him. The atmosphere of the college is the very air of freedom and bliss, and he can breathe at will. He feels that he has left his worries and cares behind him. He is elated. His professors talk to him as they would to a young friend. He likes it and feels that, at last, he is important, that he is somebody. The sense of freedom and importance does him good, but more pleasures of college are ahead. As he gets used to his liberty, he finds himself in the center of an interesting intellectual atmosphere that has its own pleasures. He may not have expected this. At first he is a shy and reluctant spectator. But gradually he gets bold and discovers new pleasures. The college union, the debating club and other societies attract him. If he remains aloof and ignores all the activities of college, he will repent later. Is it not wonderful to stand before the cheering. Sneering audience and prove one, s eloquence? Even shouts and boos and peals of laughter and ridiculing remarks do not dampen one, s spirit when one is young and confident. Then there are the pleasures of the sports field. There are other activities and other pleasures, too. There is the college library for instance. The students finds, perhaps for the first time, that are other books than the prescribed textbooks. He has access to all of them. Pleasures of reading, he discovers, are many. He enjoys the company of great writers. This broadens his sympathies and outlook. But these pleasures are only for those who look for them, and wish to live a full and active life.