Every fall, a large bevy of 17- and 18-year-olds enter their first year of higher education. They are fearful and oppressed by a completely new way of life, new surroundings, and the need to seek companions and friends where everything is strange—from the customs of the bed to the customs of the board. This is not to deny that there is a stimulus of expectancy which has its pleasurable side. Nevertheless, new students experience a temporary regression to childhood dependency. Thus, professors find freshman classes the most docile and the most teachable.

A big spur in the process of maturing occurs during the freshman year. Even before the first semester is over, most freshmen have gained confidence and feel they can now meet the challenges that seemed so threatening at first. Those who cling too long to their original timidity, reluctant to dare when daring is required, are among those who leave college after or even before their first year. It appears, on looking back to that freshman experience, that a hurdle was presented and either overcome or evaded.

Indeed, the whole of maturing from child to adult is to encounter a series of hurdles. Each one evaded carries a penalty of weakness, of some kind of immaturity, into adult life. Few adults are completely free of immaturities created by having evaded a challenge when it arose. It may show, for instance, from something as simple as an incapacity for mathematics to, more seriously, an uncontrollable temper or a deviant sexuality. Whatever it may be, it fossilizes with time once the opportunity to overcome it was allowed to pass.

The freshman year in college does not bring the first of these hurdles, but it offers one that is clearly recognizable for success or failure in meeting its challenge. So brace yourself, my hearties—a crucial year begins for you.

Sydney Ross

Professor Emeritus