looking forward to a new semester...

where a typical day might be described as

day passed as usual -- dull times & hard studying &c &c
~ Oglethorpe student, May 14, 1857

have you met a person like this?

In skimming through my primary source notes, I came across a very interesting personality. This young man, a student at Oglethorpe University from 1860-61, had rather specific views on studying.

Anticipating low grades at the end of his first semester, he feels that he must justify himself to his parents, writing:

The inference you have drawn, from my letter, of me having an easy time, is entirely a mistaken idea. I arrived here, in an unpropitious time for study, that is one reason why my [grades are] so low. (If, indeed it is so, for I have not seen [them.]) The Class were pretty far advanced in all the books, and consequently I had to stand an examination on a study that I did not get with the Class the first time going over.

Only three months later he writes to his younger brother:

...as I am not a fit one to give advice, I will not admonish you concerning your studies: for "studying hard" never was consistent with my constitution.

One week later he advises his mother regarding his sister, writing:

Above all things never urge upon her too strenuously the "necessity of study", for nothing is so distasteful to me, and I think she is similarly constituted."

Two months later in May of 1861, he attempts to use the outbreak of civil war as an excuse to disregard his studies:

I think, (you may not agree with me tho') that it is absolutely detrimental to the mind to try to study now. For the attention can not be fixed on a text book for any length of time. I greatly hoped to finish my education at this place, but now I see no probability of it. College may close in [less] than three or four weeks, and when that happens it will hardly open again, that is, until the war closes.

This young man was right in predicting that the school would close shortly. However, his views on education and disinclination to put an effort into studying seem to leave much wanting.

Are you constituted for studying? Or, do you find it absolutely detrimental to study?

the kind of thing that only happens once...

Thomas Molloy Meriwether was educated at Emory College at Oxford, Georgia. There he met Robert Watkins Lovett, Jr., of Screven County and they became friends and married sisters three times and twin sisters the last time.

All I will say is that this leads to a very complex family tree.