Timewarp

Article from Q.C.G. Annual, 1904.

Students

In “Ye City of ye Tribes.”

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The well-known French maxim “place aux dames” compels us first to make mention of the Lady Student. In dealing with this type of Student, one must proceed gently, unless one is utterly regardless of the disdainful look, the proud toss of the head, and the other indications which ladies give to the world in general when they are mortally offended. The Lady Student is a recognised part of College life in all the modern Universities and in some of the ancient seats of learning. For example, Trinity College, Dublin, has at last, unbarred the door so long shut in the face of ladies. One cannot deny that the presence of ladies in the College is a great advantage. Their appearance in a class-room is an incentive to the masculine student to work hard, and the sweet smile of a Lady Senior Scholar often compels difficult Mathematical problems to come right. Their presence also has disadvantages. The continual rustling of skirts, the rattling of jewellery, and the general “titivating” that a Lady Student thinks it is her bounden duty to keep up during a lecture are – well rather disconcerting. In Public Libraries Lady Students, in common with all other ladies we ever heard of, have a way of capturing the book one is most anxious to read and concealing it – “horresco referens” – by sitting thereon. Some of them exhibit a bashfulness and a shyness in the Lecture Hall, very different from the manner they adopt on other occasions, and sometimes they are so much overcome by laughter that they are unable to answer the question asked by the Professor.

Perhaps enough has been said about the Lady Student and we had better turn to the different types of masculine students.

First and foremost, there is the ‘studious’ Student. He is a type met with very often. He generally, though not always, wears glasses, carries great quantities of books about with him, and has an air of complete oblivion to everyday affairs. He is proud that he is able to work ten hours a day, and he will recount for one’s edification that yesterday he got through four hundred lines of ‘Ovid,’ twenty pages of ‘Plato,’ and then read as a “mental relaxation” a few chapters of Burnside and Panton’s ‘Theory of Equations’ or Salmon’s ‘Conic Sections.’ He casually quotes fifty lines of ‘Homer,’ and looks rather pleased when he sees that he has made no more impression on his audience than if he had repeated the alphabet four or five times, as this proves how very profound his learning is. He takes little or no interest in athletics of any kind, and hardly ever goes to a football match. When he does go, he will ask complacently during a ‘Rugby’ match, “Is this Rugby or Association”? One hardly appreciates a character of this kind, yet perhaps twenty years later the Educational Journals will be full of complimentary paragraphs to Dr. X., and we will then say proudly “Oh, yes, I was at College with him.”

There is the man, of course, who allows sport to monopolise everything else. He can talk of nothing else. He knows long lists of football teams and can talk of famous athletes with the candour of an intimate acquaintance. He looks upon one as an ignoramus because one is not able to discuss with him the relative merits and demerits of athletic worthies. Study is a thing he heartily despises, and in the end he finds that the knowledge he possesses is hardly sufficient to support him, and he is in danger of being reduced to earning his living by manual labour.

Then there is the well-dressed Student – to use a vulgarism “the toff.” Students, as a rule, are the worst dressed people in the world, but there are some exceptions. The well-groomed student walks round the Quadrangle with a lordly air, as if the whole place belonged to him. He despises the poor unfortunates who have to attend nine o’clock lectures and therefore have less time, even if they have the inclination, to get ‘made up’ in the style of a West-End shop-walker. To this individual with gloves and a gold-topped cane, lectures are a “beastly bore” and he considers himself an injured innocent when the College authorities refuse to give him credit for attendance.

A Medical Student has the reputation of being a lively young man. It is also a matter of common knowledge that Medical Degrees are very hard to get, and yet the “budding” doctor at College never seems weighed down with too much work. He sometimes says: “Oh, those Arts beggars, it is easy for them to get through; they have nothing to do.” Medicals generally have a decided liking for the best and most comfortable seats in Reading Rooms. They will sit, smoke, read papers and through chairs about for hours at a stretch, and to the outward observer they seem to be doing nothing; though we are told on good authority they are meditating on difficult examination questions all the time. However this may be, they disappear from public gaze for a month or two before exam. time, and, curiously enough, one always sees their names in the Pass Lists.

A rather more solid specimen is the Engineering Student. He has generally a good foundation of Mathematics to act as a ballast, and altogether he is much quieter than the Medical. He spends hours and hours over gorgeously coloured drawings, and one often sees him gazing intently through the “Theodolite,” and the natural question one asks is “What is he looking at”? A witty writer in the last number of this Magazine suggested the ‘Ladies Room,’ but we do not think Engineers are so light-headed.

With Law Students we have little acquaintance here except at the Debating Society when a legal quibbler turns and twists plain straight-forward rules into all kinds of shapes, and the result is that the distinguished Chairman has to use all his wits trying to discover what the future ‘limb of the law’ is driving at. We have seen the Law Student in a Court of Justice listening very attentively to the eloquent speech of a King’s Counsel, and taking down the Judge’s ‘summing up’ in shorthand, in a business-like manner, calculated to impress all beholders.

All of us are acquainted with the Student who suffers from “Examination Fever.” The chief symptom is an ardent desire on the part of the person affected to find out the answer to every question that was ever set or that ever can be set. He will plague his friends and even mere acquaintances day after day with questions which he expects to be answered on the ‘spur of the moment.’ When friends fail he betakes himself to Dictionaries, Encyclopædias and other Works of Reference, thereby occasioning no small trouble to the Librarian. One can bear with him pretty well till the morning of the Examination, and then one’s patience is worn out as it is harrowing enough to find out how little one does know when seated at the desk in the Examination Hall, but, to come to that knowledge twenty minutes before the examination begins is infinitely more trying. This disease lasts from about two months before the date of the Examinations, and the patient only recovers when the results are known. After a searching enquiry of this kind one’s mind is in much the same state as that of the young gentleman who studied at Dr. Blimber’s Academy, and who got so muddled that he could no remember whether “hic, haec, hoc,” was Troy measure or whether “two Remuses” made “one Romulus.”

Lastly, the best type of Student is the man who can enjoy both sport and study without allowing either to play too great a part in his life. Unfortunately, men who have these characteristics are not very common, but yet one sometimes meets them, and we think a better type could not be produced.

In this paper we have perhaps magnified small points too much and neglected others of greater importance, but, if we take all things into consideration, we come to the conclusion that Students compare very favourably with other sections of the community in every way.

Nemo.