EDGAR B. OXLEY

I had never seriously considered going to college until, during my junior year in high school, a visiting university professor, who addressed the student body on “The Advantages of a College Education,” offered statistics to show that, while only two per cent. of the high school students of this country ever graduate from college, about seventy-five per cent. of the successful men to-day are college graduates. This came as a surprise and a revelation to me, and set me to thinking seriously about what advantages a college education really had to offer, with the result that I decided that it has many in this day and age. And so I resolved to go to college.

Then there arose the question of finances. I consulted my parents; they encouraged me in my ambition to continue my education, but told me that if I went away to school it would be on my own resources. However, I knew that there were a great many self-supporting students in the colleges of the United States. I had sufficient confidence in myself to be willing to make a trial at earning my way as others were doing. 246

I entered the University of Arizona in the fall of 1911. The first two or three weeks I made expenses by beating carpets, hoeing weeds, and mopping floors; then a newly made friend, the superintendent of the University dining hall, gave me a job there waiting on table. I was the only student waiter. There were, in addition, eight or nine Japs serving as waiters, with whom I managed to get along all right. From that time on I have had easy sailing. To-day, the Japs are no longer in the mess hall, but in their places are thirteen student waiters. This is indicative of the rapid growth of our college, and particularly of the number of self-supporting students who enter every year. Ninety per cent. of the men students of the University of Arizona are self-supporting; this is said to be the highest average of any college known.

There are three essentials that the young man who enters college with the intention of working his way must possess. First of all, he must have stamina. Call it what you will: “grit” or “sand” or “pluck,” it all amounts to the same thing, that he must “screw his courage to the sticking point,” and, in the face of disappointments ............