Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford, page 19 by Edward Berens
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which you must necessarily pass in Oxford, in order to take your bachelor's degree, is but little after all. Your whole actual residence, during the three years, will probably not much exceed a year and a half. Certainly, of this modicum of time you cannot afford to waste any portion. Make a point of devoting it to real study, to real strenuous exertion. You owe this to yourself--to your own credit and character; you owe it to your parents, who have probably put themselves to some pecuniary inconvenience, in order to give you the advantage of an Oxford education; you owe it to God, to whom you are responsible for the employment of your time, as well as for the proper use of your other talents. Fix in your mind and memory the lesson taught you by the sun-dial in the Quadrangle at All Souls--"Pereunt et imputantur;" or that of another similar monitor--"Ab hoc momento pendet æternitas." Take time for exercise; take time for relaxation; but make steady reading your object and your business. Do not be so weak, or so unmanly, or so vain, as to be ashamed of being known to read. You went to Oxford on purpose to study; why should you be ashamed of keeping that purpose in view?
In the choice of your studies, be guided implicitly by the advice of your tutor. Very likely you may not see the use of some branches of science, or of reading some particular books. But do not fancy that in such matters you are wiser than older men, who have maturely considered these things again and again. If you mean to be your own guide and your own teacher, you had better have staid away from Oxford altogether. It is one great advantage of academical education, that a definite course of reading is marked out for you. When a young man,--indeed, when any man,--is left entirely to his own choice, he is apt to be distracted by the many different branches of study, the many different books, which present themselves, and to fall into a habit of desultory reading, productive of little lasting benefit.