SMAD. An Organ of Student Opinion. 1937. Volume 8. Number 1.
Professor Mile's Advice
Professor Mile's Advice.
"I have much pleasure in welcoming to Victoria University College the new students of 1937. Your first aim. without doubt, is to equip yourselves for your chosen profession. As most of you come directly from school, a few words about the differences between School and University may be of use. At school you probably studied five or six subject and had your work set and supervised at very frequent intervals. At the university you will be studying two or three subjects much more intensely than at school; and although there may be a weekly exercise and three or four short tests in the course of the session you will have very much greater freedom in organising your work. I would advise you very strongly to keep up to the work covered in lectures. It is a disheartening experience to go through the session only half understanding the lectures. It is very difficult for a university teacher to be in anything like such close contact with first year students as a school teacher is with his pupils, but I do assure you most sincerely that the members of the staff are glad when their students have recourse to them in their difficulties. In particular, as Chairman of the Professorial Board, I want every student to feel free to approach me for advice.
"A university worthy of the name is something more than a professional school. Whether you are a student of Arts, Science, Law, or Commerce, I hope you will take some part in the wider social life of the College.
"In these days of rapid change it behoves us all to have opinions about the great problems of human nature and of society; let us by reading and by discussion see that such opinions are reasoned ones. We are fortunate in having at Victoria College an admirable library; to make the best use of a library requires training, do not therefore hesitate to seek the guidance of the librarian and his staff. There is a place for browsing and desultory reading, but I take it that you will generally read with a definite purpose. I have myself found it a sound principle, when I really wanted to gain knowledge, to read the big books on a subject. Having done this, by all means read short brilliant sketches of aspects of the subject. To confine one's reading to the latter is rather like making a dinner of savouries. When you have settled down here and understand the New Zealand University System, you might find it interesting to read Newman's "Idea of a University" and Flexner's "Universities: American, English, and German."
"In conclusion, I cannot wish you a better fate than that, when you have finished your three or four years at Victoria College, you may be able to look back at them with the same pleasure as I do at my four years at Knox College and Otago University."