Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 10, No. 1. February 28, 1947

[Introduction]

Every student, at some stage in his career, finds occasion to groan about something, whether it be because of the way he was quinced by two marks in last term's Greek mystery paper, or simply because he can't stand the rolling of Dr. Stulpnagel's glass eye in Harmony II. Generally, if the groan is only a small one, it fizzles itself out in the gasworks and hot air division of the Common Room. On the other hand, it may become an incubus of terrible domination, racking the student's waking hours and reducing him to a condition of nervous impotency. In such case, if he is sufficiently independent, our undergraduate hies off with his grievance to his professor, and lays the whole weary story before him. The latter interrupts his work of cooking up snooters for the weekly test, hears his alumnus with kindliness, and sends, him away happy.

But all professors and their ilk are exceptionally busy men, especially in these days of classes a hundred strong, and many students are reluctant to approach them with problems in this personal, barge-in-barge-out way. So for every personal problem which is brought to the teacher's notice, there are probably a hundred more unsolved simmering and stewing in the minds of his back-benchers, upsetting their application and reducing the efficiency of their work.