Who do you believe?

One female student's observation:

MIss Valeria Gunn... was a brilliant student, almost a genius, and took her position equal with them and maintained it throughout the year. Her record was so nearly perfect that at the final reward of honors at Commencement, the judge had to divide the greatly coveted First Honor among the three contestants -- a very unusual thing. Poor Valeria had paid too dearly though, for at the time of Commencement she was ill from having studied too hard. It was that although there was a rule of lights out at ten o'clock, she used candles and continued her study far into the night. She never recovered from this illness; she gradually grew worse, later lost her mind and was sent to an asylum.

The command is to be temperate in all things. Ambition when carried too far is often destruction.

A male student's observation:

The plodding, dollar-worshipping, unscrupulous man who possesses energy and economy generally amasses wealth. I can now recall many instances of boys who were the dunces of the school and who became wealthy before they had attained half a century of years, while the bright boys of the school with all his classical attainments, apt quotations and witty repartee, has drifted off into the seedy pedagogue of a little village school, living in a realm of fancy... It is a difficult matter to decide which life is most of a failure, one had only capacity to accumulate and he succeeded, the other had capacity and dreamed his life away. Many men seem never to have a new thought after shutting up their text books when they leave school. Many others seem never to have exercised their minds until they passed from under the perils of the schoolmaster.

Perhaps we should follow this student's example:

The fact is I have done less this term than any since I have been in college. Neither of my texts are agreeable. I don't like mental philosophy and astronomy tangles my brain... I wonder if there ever was anybody who had patience enough to spend their time on that mind-confusing book unless they intended to sport among the stars. As for me, this planet, on which we figure, has enough to employ my thoughts if I were to live as old as Methuselah.

Or, perhaps "studying hard" was never consistent with your constitution anyway.

Contemporary: Past or Present?

In the multiple revisions of my thesis draft, I'm coming across some fairly common words in the English dictionary which have contradictory or odd alternate meanings.

For example, the word contemporary:
(1) living or occurring at the same time; dating from the same time
(2) belonging to or occurring in the present
So, if I say "contemporary historian", do I mean someone contemporary with my subjects or with me? That's a 150 year difference.

The word retire:
(1) leave one's job and cease to work, typically upon reaching the normal age for leaving employment
(2) withdraw to or from a particular place; to go to bed
So, if I say "Everyone retired early", do I mean that people left their jobs when they were only 50 years old or that everyone went to bed early? Strikingly different!

Context normally tells you everything, but not always. I guess that's what synonyms are for.

~ the well-spoken