"Whenever a college man applies to me for a job I never inquire about his scholastic standing," recently remarked a business man, himself a university graduate. "What I want to know is how he spent his summer vacations--three months per annum, and before he gets his degree that amounts to a whole year, the most valuable I think, of his entire collegiate course. Never again will he have a similar opportunity. If he has wasted it, I know something about him; if not, he has a record worth showing."
That ought to give college men something to think about. The average collegian regards the summer holidays merely as a period of recreation and rarely thinks of them as the chance of a lifetime. Of course, a large number of students obtain work of various kinds during July, August and September, but the ordinary summer job has little or no educational value . . . If it is a case of necessity, any work is justified, but not otherwise. By carefully planning his vacation program almost any enterprising young man can do far better. He can fill the whole or part of his summers with activities which, while they may not bring him immediate financial returns, will round out his experience. He will thus acquire a real asset--for other business men doubtless think as does the one quoted.
"Here's the record of one boy I've just employed," this man continued. "At the end of his freshman year he went for one month to a citizens' military camp: after sophomore year he worked for six weeks with Dr. Grenfell's mission in Labrador; at the close of junior year he had a month and a half with the Banks fishing fleet and after graduation he spent July and August with a forestry outfit. All of it was open air work, putting him in good physical condition and in touch with all sorts and conditions of men. He used only twenty-six of the forty-eight free weeks at his disposal, but I don't care what he did with the others. Those twenty-six weeks were what I call a 'vacation cum laude.' They gave him an unusual equipment for success and I only wish I could find more young men who possessed it."
Vacations cum laude! That's a practical hint for the campus. The New York Evening Post.
