Show 154 STUDENT LIFE ly technical subjects an instructor overestimates his teaching ability and puts the quiz up to the standard of the few leading universities of the country As a result the student attacks subjects equally as difficult as corresponding subjects in such schools naturally with inThere is more ferior instruction in teaching than to work problems A professor who can estimate his own ability and the relative ability of his class who combines professional dignity and integrity with a power to make his students feel at home with him and the subject accomplishes the highest results The students consistently expect an indicated spot and run it in arr indicated direction to an indicated place on an indicated grade and make a faultless report to his chiefs And a thousand other things he is able to do But he is unable to ride over a country select the place to tap the river figure on available arid land probable future utilization of present unused land future rise or decline of a community and have future engineers commend his judgment He is unable to leave the laboratory desk with its little texts and countless thumb rules his college professor has bequeathed him and run the manufacturing establishment He lives and dies in the routine work Such men are necessary but the world is full of them He is unable to run a railroad over ten thousand miles of territory select the cheapest route estimate relative cost of a curve or a cut or fill decide whether for an indefinite time the wear on the rolling stock of a railroad would be more costly by making a sharp curve than by tearing down a mountain and constructing a tangent decide whether a certain town will increase in importance or decline whether another town will in a few years be able to support a road or not These and a thousand other things effect his final judgment on the course the road sh'rild take And in the record of the ac- some difficult situations figure curves and check his work at the year’s end with surprising accuracy He is able to take out a canal from complishment his name goes down as chief engineer His future professional success is measured by the accuracy of his judgment We that some of the foregoing statements be considered They expect that an examination shall summarize the term’s work that it be not a means of scaring some to work but simply a weighing apparatus used for the purpose of proper adjusting Examinations at best are a farce destined in due course of educational advancement to meet the fate of similar relics of a crude age A student who through four years of a college course is compelled to grind out details goes into the world in what condition? He is able to stand at the chemist’s desk year after year make tests record results accurately and do what some book or his foreman tells him He is able to manipulate a transit in |