1 I
THE HESPERIAN
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regulations is all that is necessary, and that
simply means to register every semester,
and to pay for a course of lectures ; attend
ance is not essential. There is no inquiry
into your whereabouts ; no examinations,
no effort to find out what you are learning
from week to week. When I say there are
no examinations, 1 mean for the large stud
ent body. When a student becomes a can
didate for a degree, his relations to the fac
ulty under which he is studying undergo a
change. Until that time all that I have
said and shall say holds good.
The graduate of the gymnasium on enter
ing the university deposits his diploma at
the university office, pays the matriculation
fee, and receives a paper that admits him
later to the presence of the rector in the uni
versity hall. There he publicly promises to
obev all the rules of the institution and in
pledge thereof gives the rector the hand
ychlag. From the office he receives a cata
logue of the lectures and a book in which he
inscribes the lectures he wishes to hear to
gether with the cost of each course. Before
pledging himself for a course of lectures he
is desirous of hearing his man. Accord
ingly he haunts the bulletin boards in one
of the great hallways until his lecturers post
a notice of the place where they can be heard.
Our student attends the lecture and during
the hour a paper is passed around to be
signed by those who wish to attend. After
the lecture courses have been selected, and
the book filled out it is aken to the quaestor,
or treasurer, who receives the money for
ihe lectures and signs his name in the book.
All the forms have now been properly
observed and what the student does from
tiow until the end of the semester is his own
affair. He may not hear another lecture
until the close of the half year. Then he
visits the lecture room again and sends his
book to the professor who by signing it tes
tifies that the student has been a regular at
tendant ! Suppose a man should attend the
university in a perfrmeptory manner for
throe or four semesters and then leave. In
that case he would receive from the univer
sity a statement that he had taken certain
courses of lectures. Not a word would be
said as to his knowledge of them. A very
largo number of students remain a few sem
esters and leaves without degrees. Of the
3,500 students at Leipzig in 1SSS perhaps
two or three hundred took degrees that year.
But if a man intends to take a degree, he
follows a different course. He generally
knows what he intends to specialize in when
he enters the university. Suppose it to be
modern history. If he be wise, he will call
upon the ablest professor in modem history
and take his advice in regard to the two
subjects to be studied in connection with
history. In many cases he waits a year,
listening to as many lectures as possible and
doing some reading in connection with them.
Perhaps in his second year he joins a sem
inar, and for the first time is brought into
direct contact with the professor. Now his
work takes more definite shape. He sees
just what to do and how to do it. He pre
pares a paper for the seminar, making use
of all the material in the richly stored sem
inar library, and in the university library
with its 300,000 volumes. He has no other
spur than his ambition to do creditable work;
work that can stand the searching criticism
of the master workman at the head of the
table. He knows too that when the final
day comes and he is put on trial, it will be
the amount of work done and the way in
which it has been done that alone will save
him. Knowing this he goes industriously
about his task, wasting no time. It is not
necessary to tell him that he injures only
himself by waste of time. The fact is self
evident to him. At the ond of his fourth
semester, after he has listened to lectures
and read for two years and worked faith
fully in the seminar for one year, he girds
himself up for his great effort, the prepara
tion of a dissertation.
If ho design taking a subject from the
period in which the professor is a specialist,
the professor may indicate to him some mine
that has not yet been worked. In the maj
ority of cases the student must select his
iti
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