At the threshold of a new academic year

A NEW academic year starts. Some students return to school with enthusiasm. Many dread it and mourn the passing of summer and its joys (and folly!). But a lot depends on disposition — and it is tremendously important that students start a new school year with their hearts and their minds in the right place.

First, all too often, the years one spends in school are spent in anticipation of the "satisfaction" of graduation — and the employment that follows. The result, of course, is that one hardly enjoys one's time at school and can hardly wait for it to be over. Four years — for most — and eight or nine for others (law and medicine) agonizingly drag on. But that is a mistake. One's years in school are as real and integral to life as are the years of one's childhood and the years of adult life. It is gospel wisdom to leave the cares of tomorrow for tomorrow — which is not to encourage heedlessness about the future but to live the present to the fullest! Enjoy your years in school. Set yourselves afire to learn and to be excited about learning. You will not have the same chance in the future to learn what you are supposed to be learning now. It is a costly mistake to think that "one will learn this stuff again" in some indefinite future.