542 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Items Chosen. — As already explained, the original intent was to 

 obtain statistics in regard to the five items cited in the president's ad- 

 dress, viz., work, meals, amusement, athletics and sleep. It seemed 

 desirable, however, to obtain some further indication of the distribution 

 of the time included under work. Hence the subdivisions — lectures 

 (including recitations), laboratories, shop and field, and outside study 

 — which are summarized in the tables as ' University work ' by the 

 figures in parentheses following that item. The term ' physical exer- 

 cise ' was chosen as being more comprehensive than ' athletics,' and the 

 ( unclassified ' category was added for obvious reasons. 



After the blanks had been distributed, but before they had been 

 filled out, the writer's attention was called to the desirability of ob- 

 taining a record of the time devoted to work for self-support. Notice 

 was accordingly given in the college papers that students who spent time 

 in this way should record the amount as a separate item. Many ob- 

 served this request; others, who did not, added explanatory remarks to 

 their reports so that the writer was able to compute the time correctly 

 and subtract it from the time assigned by them to physical exercise, 

 unclassified or meals* as the case might be. On the supposition that 

 some self-supporting students failed either to itemize this time or other- 

 wise to indicate it, we may assume that the percentage of self-sup- 

 porting students and the percentage of time allotted to self-support 

 may be slightly too low. 



Finally, in the light of our experience, we may mention three im- 

 provements that might have been made in the list of items. 



In the first place, 'shop and field ' did not prove of sufficient im- 

 portance to justify the separate item, being only pertinent to students 

 in engineering, agriculture and architecture (draughting), and the 

 amount of field work in civil engineering and agriculture being at a 

 minimum in the winter. All phases of university work other than 

 class-room work might be conveniently indicated collectively under 

 some such term as ' practicums.' 



Secondly, many, especially freshmen in arts, hesitated to include 

 recitations with lectures — a difficulty which had to be remedied by the 

 writer in tabulation, but which might have been avoided by specific 

 instruction. 



Thirdly, a number of important student activities are not easily 

 placed under the present rubrics, and thus fell into the unclassified 

 category. We refer to such things as musical club rehearsals, Y. M. 

 C. A. meetings, work for the college papers, in class politics, upon 

 fraternity business — time spent for various university organizations. 

 Such activity is not strictly university work, but neither is it amuse- 

 ment, nor physical exercise. An item should have been introduced 

 to include this significant phase of student life. 



* In the case of those who waited upon table. 



