PAGE TWO
SUMMER SESSION KANSAN
SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 19
Comment
Miss Olsen Leaves
The University will face a difficult task when it attempts to replace Miss Mary C. Olsen, whose resignation as executive secretary of the CSEP was given to Chancellor Lindley this week. Handling the countless duties of her position since the beginning of the project in 1934, Miss Olsen has accepted increased responsibilities constantly since that time, until now the selection of a competent successor will prove to be a major problem.
But an even more important consideration is the loss many hundreds of students in the University will feel when she departs. Her deep interest in every individual student's problems has raised their esteem for her to a height which few administrators in any position ever realize. More than 1,600 different University students have worked on CSEP during the three and one-half years of its existence, and it is significant to note that Miss Olsen was able to call every one of those students by his or her first name.
In her work as a student adviser, she was called upon for help in many student problems wholly unrelated to the work project. Her willingness to take this added responsibility endeared her to the persons seeking aid, and it is probable that she enjoyed a deeper confidence from a large portion of the student body than did any other person in the University.
She goes to Topeka Monday to accept a state position which represents an important step ahead in her career as a social worker. Her friends here are overjoyed at her good fortune. But it is a joy that is almost stifled by regret at her departure.
There is one consolation for the Republicans nowadays, however. It evidentally takes two Democrats to do the work that one Republican has been doing all along.
An undergraduate student remarked this week at the curious paradox always to be seen in summer session: serious-faced teachers from various parts of the state, who despise any suggestion of "apple-polishing" on the part of their poor students for nine months in every year, return to their Alma Mater and suddenly blossom forth as past masters of the art. 'Tis positively amazing.
Paradox
The prime process, the sure-fire formula, is good old-fashioned flattery. But to practice it successfully, you must be subtle. Oh, indubitably.
No more gushing blarney will do the job. You must always agree with the instructor, and yet frequently give him a chance to convince you that he is right. And when he utters a profound truth, it's a good plan to nod your head in apparently unconscious but whole-hearted approval. A few minutes practice daily before a mirror will put a fine polish upon this particular bit of business.
Perhaps a bit of elaboration would be in order.
Another basic principle is that of strategic questioning. If your professor is one of those
Just in case the phrase is unfamiliar to the reader, let us define "apple polishing" as any process (other than outright cribbing on exams) whereby a student boosts his grade above what it ordinarily would be.
inquisitive beings who likes to make a heavy statement and end it with a blank for you to fill in, keep your hand down until one comes along which you're positive you can answer. Then volunteer vigorously, and your success in that particular course is practically assured.
Related is the principle of questioning after class has ended. Make a habit of asking the professor one or two meaty questions each day as the hour closes, and you will learn the wisdom of what should be an adage, "A question a day keeps the D's away."
Yes, there are many ways. We have discussed only a few. But all this confidential information, of course, is meant exclusively for the benefit of the uninitiated student. After all, experienced teachers who spend three fourths of the year battling the process as instructors seldom need much instructions in its principles when they return as students themselves.
All they need is an opportunity for application.
Senator Capper of Kansas is proposing heavier duties on pork, which is appropriate enough for a Republican senator in this current vale of arrears.
Campus Opinion
Articles in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Summer Session Kansan. Articles over 200 words in length are subject to cutting by the editor. Contributions on any subject are invited.
Editor Summer Session Kansan:
I have just been psychologized! Yes sir! You see, I am new on Mount Oread, and the powers that be, unagnizant of the fact that I have maintained a 2.7 average through 60 hours of college work already, had to learn to their own satisfaction that I am mentally sound. I await their verdict with great trepidation. Is it possible that they may send me back home to my mama?
So far as I could see, the questions had about as much bearing upon such things as knowledge and learning as a discussion of love-life in the Antarctic would have upon the unemployment situation in New York. It was impossible to cheat on the examination, because the questions were so impossible that I would never have known whether I was copying the correct answer from my neighbor.
However, to the author of the test, I would like to pose the following query: If two snakes of exactly the same size and length start swallowing each other's tails—how far will they get?
Maybe it's me, I don't know, but I thought I was coming to summer school. But now that I am here I can't be sure whether it is I or the summer school in the wrong place.
Yours, J.S.
Editor Summer Session Kansan:
It all comes about because of these things: First, it really isn't summer. I have reached that conclusion in spite of the fact that all the calendars I have seen have the month of June on top, but at that I can't be sure they are 1837 calendars. And it is certain that the weather wouldn't lead one to believe it was summer.
Where are the 21 or so tennis courts advertised in the summer session pamphlets, bustling over with activity, and the two swimming pools chuck full of splashing, shouting paddlers, and the golf course with its fresh air constantly being polluted by the irate words of disgusted golfers? I'd like to see a spirited tennis match some day, myself, but nobody will play. And it's a foregone conclusion that I won't be able to find anyone with the time to play checkers.
Then there is the sporting angle. I have always been something of the athlete myself, and in high school won the city championship in both chess and checkers, which is in itself quite a feat in view of the fact that in our town mental concentration is as rife as chicken thieves.
Then a thought strikes me and I am blushing with shame. Maybe everybody is studying. But that is a dirty shame and something ought to be done about it. That is what is wrong. There is the very core of the difficulty. That's why summer school doesn't seem to be summer school. I'm right; everybody else is wrong. —J.C.
Contributors' Column
HEMLOCK
You, the old grad, are now identified with that large, and we must admit, select, body of individuals seen at the entrance of the graduate enclosure during enrollment: serious faced, intent, appreciably older than the sprinkling of undergraduates, impressed by the realization of the vastness and seriousness of life, firmly resolved to achieve the bigger and better things undoubtedly waiting for them in the months to come.
Can you, in the classrooms, pick out others like you, intent on making the most of what conscience or a demanding school board has arranged for the summer? Can you, on the campus, identify immediately those of your kind, like you a bit alien to the unaccustomed flow of undergraduate life?
The old grad sees and feels familial surroundings but realizes inevitably that he is not, nor can never be, a part of it. Why? You ask an impossible question. Better to simply fall back on the idea of the summer school graduate as an entirely different species of homo sapiens and dispense with the necessity for analysis.
And so the old grad, back at long last on the soil he once longed so heartily to quit, tries to put down that annoying realization of unfamiliarity, buys a collegiate notebook, resumes cigaret smoking (although his bank account won't stand for it), plasters a Jayhawk on the back window of his car, and hopes that perhaps he'll look like a senior who flunked out last semester. It's no go, old grad. You're an alien on familiar soil; undergraduate days are, sadly, a thing of the past. Best resign yourself to the fact that you look and act just like all the other grads you see on the campus.
I'm nuts? Perhaps! But, you see
I'm an old grad too!
—P. R. K.
Now anyone living in Salina might well believe that Kansas is one large undulating plain. Thus unprepared for "mountain climbing" a Salina girl wore very high heeled slippers, but after one trip down Mt. Oread rushed to a shoe store to purchase slippers suitable for climbing the "Hill."
Mountains in Kansas! At least one newcomer to the campus has learned that the University rests on a mountain top.
But she still insists the Hill is a mountain. Anyone can tell the mountains, she declares, by that cool tinge of the mountain air.
—R.M.K.
The titles of masters' theses made entertaining reading during the lull between commencement and enrollment. The subject with the box office appeal to us, timely, practical, itchingly pertinent, is the subject of something-or-other as a control for chiggers. We always thought salty butter was the thing to use, but maybe the man has something there.
So much has been said and so wisely said, that it does not behoove any of us to say more on the question of those pipes on the sidewalk in front of the Administration Building. However we know of a head librarian and a lady dean and the wife of the president of a nearby college who came up here to a concert one dark and stormy night, stumbled over
Summer Session Kansai
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those pipes, and piled up uncer moniously, one, two, three. The is one to fall was rather short, so s could not fall very far—just sort leaned. —L.G.
Old Grads Filch Files To Solicit for Flint Awar
Prof. L. N. Flint, veteran chaiman of the department of journalism in the University, was thpeasantly surprised recipient of gold watch last Monday, presente by former students as he complete his delivery of the annual address to the University of Kansas alumni J. J. Kistler, assistant professor o journalism, made the presentation
Two former students under P professor Flint, Llewellyn White Chester Shaw, both on the sta the Literary Digest, conceived a idea of an award a few weeks a Writing to the alumni office here they secured its co-operation for bit of necessary skullduggy.
Files of journalism graduates were quietly taken from Professor Flint office, and an intensive campaign t secure the necessary funds got under way. "Captains for various sections of the country were notifie directly, and they in turn solicite graduates in their territories.
In record time, the agreed upon num had been collected, and the award was made on schedule.
Donald Dixon, '37, is taking graduate work in the speech department at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Dixon is well known in the speech department here having bee prominent in its activities.
It Should Be a Pleasant Duty to Look Over Our Wonderful Line of Summer Wearables
Griffon Tropical
Worsteds, Carib Cloths
Cool Spuns
Genuine
PALM BEACHES
all at
$1675