Newspapers / Gardner-Webb University Student Newspaper / May 1, 1954, edition 1 / Page 13
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LITERARY THE FORGOTTEN THINGS The little, insignificant things are sometimes the most im portant, but often they slip by unnoticed. They are with us as fleeting fairies on petal toes. Not always do they knock at the door of our minds and hearts as does opportunity. Often our glimpse is so faint that we are not sure of a true vision, but somehow we feel the imprint of something that was not there before. One of these things is words. Have you ever thought of the number of words invading your consciousness each day? So often we lay aside those words of whose meaning we are not quite sure, never to retrieve them from our subconscious mind for analysis. We go to class with our minds drugged with thoughts far removed from our im mediate surroundings, sometimes with a barrier built up against learning. Often when we hear a new word, especially if it has more than two syllables, we let it slide, thinking we will never have occasion to use it. We cannot know its value to us as individuals unless we know all of its meanings. Last September most of us probably thought we were pretty intelligent. We thought we had learned quite a lot thus far in life, but, of course, we knew there was just a “little” more to be learned. Being in college was a new and fascinating game to us. The balloon which we had once thought inflated with a tremendous amount of knowledge seemed somehow to have been deflated. It could have been because of the terminology used by all the high-minded professors. All those psychological ex aminations didn’t help our ego too much either. We found our acquaintances with words and the dictionary had been all too brief. Brushing up our old vocabulary and developing a new one seemed to be our best bet. We found this to be true in our reading and writing usage of words as well as our speaking diction. Sitting in our various classes we often wonder, “How will this particular course help me in the field I shall enter after graduation?” This is especially true in a course like biolt^y or chemistry when we are not majoring in a field of science. We tend to let the terminology relating to these courses bounce off the barrier of our mind, like a basketball bounces off the backboard during a pre-game warm-up. In reality we should have the doors of our minds opened wide to receive that in which we do not already have an interest. Our minds are thus disciplined for a greater capacity of learning. Our know ledge increases as does our word power. One of cur professor’s told us that our only connection with other people is words. If our words are limited, our ability to express ourselves to others is equally limited. Our word capacity should be increased gradually and constantly as the CTer widening circles of the pool after the splash of a rock m Never before in our lives has our need for words been more acute than it is now. Each new day brings new words into our lives, to be snatched out of space and called our own; or to be overlooked in our quest for knowledge, with no thought to those unseen words which pass us as trains in the night. Once in a while our professors call our attention to new words and tell us to write them down somewhere, thus helping us to grasp new words. We may or may not write them down, but we usually wish we had remembered to learn them when we hear them used by someone else. We hear them on television, on the radio and in conversation; we read them in the newspapers. We must be well informed. To be well informed we must know words and how to use them. To know words we must start as the builder—lay our foundation, get the best material available and add to our knowledge day by day. Words should no longer be insignificant or forgotten things, but building stones for our entire lives. MY MUSIC CAREER By GALE BALL Truly, music is an art—an art which we all love in one way or another. I have always loved it but in a different way from the way the average person feels about it. Except for a lull between the ages of eleven through thirteen, I have en joyed entertaining people with my music. Of course, it depend ed upon the individual taste as to whether or not this proved a successful adventure. To me, music is a good opera or symphony; however, my next choice is classical music. I believe that everyone should appreciate at least one type of music, because music is man’s THE ALARM CLOCK Have you ever had an alarm clock? If you haven’t I would say you have had a streak of luck. Personally, I can’t say that I have too great a liking for the man who invented them. He must have had .something against the human-race, else he would not have brought into existence this vindictive enemy of sleep. He must have been afflicted with a prolonged case of insomnia. One night while pacing the floor because of his sleeplessness, he probably resented the fact that his wife was sleeping soundly, even though he was vexed with this inability to sleep. Out of this resentment I imagine an idea of retaliation grew in his mind. The device would be one to disturb the rest of the wicked—those who slept while he paced the floor. The idea must have grown until it became almost an obsession with him. The culmination of this idea conceived in the wee hours of the morning was what we “lovingly (Ha!) call the alarm clock. Could it be when he put this invention on the market that he laughed up his sleeve and said to himself, “The world will little know the purpose for which this clock was brought into being. It will probably be accepted as a blessing to man kind.” And so it has except by me I guess. Maybe you have one of these maladjusted creatures (called an alarm clock in fashionable society); you have my deepest sympathy. Through your innocence of its almost diabolical character, you have probably accepted it as one of the neces sary evils connected with everyday life. Let me set forth here and now a few truths about this fiendish character, the per sonification of its inventor. It just sits there on the table, looking at you as if to say, “Go to sleep if you dare.” Turning your face to the wall, you try to drift into the blessedness of dreamland. By this time the clock starts on its mfernal song. Any other gentle clock merely says “tick-tock, tick-tock,” lulling you into the quietness of Sleep. Big Ben has a serenade for you that is altogether dif ferent. It goes something like this, “Ha, Ha, Ha, you and me. Wakefulness, don’t I love thee!” I don’t think Big Ben has ever met Emily Post. If he has I have seen no Indication of it yet. You have probably never noticed the ill-manners he possesses; he is unusually adept at concealing them by making you feel as though you are at fault. When you are brought into reality by the deafening clang by your bed, you are probably very annoyed at being awakened. Be sides this, when you try to turn it off, somehow it always man ages to get on the floor and keep right on ringing. Of course, you are dumb enough at first to think it happened through your own clumsiness. You learn later that it is Big Ben’s favorite way of annoying you. He just doesn’t know when to shut up. Society would probably look down her aristocratic nose with a irown at Big Ben; he just doesn’t have any consideration for the other fellow, especially his owner. What you probably don’t know is that you have a mental alarm clock. When you get used to setting it, you have no more worries about waking at a reasonable hour. You can go to Sleep promptly without its pessimistic face ’ before your eyes and also with the satisfaction of knowing that you are again king of your domain, not the clock, which is resting peacefully in an unmarked grave in the city dump. mode of sensitive expression. In school at Thomasville I did quite a bit of singing, and I enjoyed it tremendously. Although I had always dreamed of making music my career, with voice as my special field, my decision did not become final until my senior year in high school. After being persuaded to enroll in Gardner-Webb Col lege, I came as a freshman and began to study music as my major. Miss Abbie Miller, the piano teacher here at Gardner- Webb, acclaimed possibilities for me other than voice I came to realize more and more that music is my world. No one can ever know how happy it made me to learn this, for I had al ways been afraid that I was chasing a rainbow. Since I have been at Gardner-Webb, I have done a good deal of solo work and I am hoping I will be able to enter still wider fields. My hope is that someday I may be able to use my voice in some way in the field of entertainment. Page 12
Gardner-Webb University Student Newspaper
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May 1, 1954, edition 1
13
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