Returned Missionaries as College Students

RETURNED MISSIONARIES AS COLLEGE STUDENTS By Asael T. Hansen Returned missionaries are the best students we have at the Utah Agricultural College. Although no survey has ever been made to determine their exact scholastic standing relative to the rest of the student body, there is a well recognized and universal feeling that they have superior records. You cannot find an instructor who has any question in his mind on the subject. But high scholarship represents only a part of their excellence. You can find them in every student activity. Athletics, debating, drama, music, and writing all have their quota. Their maturity, their soundness, and their dependability, make them valuable members of student councils. They have learned how to make the best of their abilities, and, now, they have turned all the enthusiasm that they evi- denced while laboring in the mission field to the task of getting the maximum good out of college. Nor is their superiority necessarily due to extraordinary natural endowment; for we find that a given fellow is a better student after he returns from a mission than he was before he went away. As one of them put it, "Before I went out to preach the gospel I was an easy-going B and C student, but since I have come back, I just can't get anything but A's." This experience is not unusual. Now let us examine some of the things derived from two or three years of proselyting, which tend especially to make for excellence in college. First, of course, is the ability to study. The training which teaches missionaries to study is rigorous and unavoidable. They must have ready and accurate knowledge of everything which is likely to arise in the course of their controversies. A missionary cannot, as a college man so often does, mumble some meaningless conglomera- tion of words in answer to a question he does not know. He must know, and he must know accurately. Furthermore, he must be able to articulate his thoughts logically and to express them clearly. Utah students are famous for their facility of oral expression. Both Thomas Nixon Carver of Harvard and E. C. Branson of the University of North Carolina, while they were teaching at the Utah Agricultural College Summer School, noted the remarkable ease with which the students talked. It would be a safe wager that most of those responsible for creating this impression had been on missions. Speaking contests and debating teams are al- ways enriched by the presence of those who have learned while pro- mulgating the gospel how to stand on their feet and say what is on their minds.

RETURNED MISSIONARIES AS COLLEGE STUDENTS 931 Then, the missionary's attitude has been enriched and his out- look broadened by his travels. He has rubbed elbows with strange and interesting peoples and cultures. His horizon is more inclusive than that of his less fortunate fellow student who has never had the experience of a mission. The missionary learns infinitely more than the ordinary tourist who rushes about from place to place seeing only what is pointed out to him. The missionary has time to look and really see things. He lives with the people in the region where he preaches. He eats what they eat, and he talks their language. In order to do effective work he must also have a sympathetic attitude towards their traditions, customs, and ideals. In short, their life is his life, and he is for a time one of them. I recall a class which illustrates just how such experience may enrich a course of study. Professor Henry C. Cowles of the University of Chicago has taught crop ecology for twenty-five years in various places in the country. When he was teaching that subject in a class at the Utah Agricultural College, he asked how many had noted agricul- tural practices outside of the inter-mountain region. There were students there who had returned from missions in Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, Mexico, and Europe, besides various places in the United States. Professor Cowles was astounded and delighted. He testified that in all his teaching he had not met such a cosmopolitan class. The course was immensely enriched as a result. Another thing a missionary acquires while he is away from college is maturity. When he comes home he has usually decided what he wants to do. Since he knows where he intends to go, ht chooses his subjects with a definite goal in mind and then sets to worK to get there as quickly as he can. He is purposeful. He means busi- ness. All of these things tend to make the returned missionary a peer among college students. Last Winter the returned missionaries at the Utah Agricultural College organized a club. There are forty members at present. They are an excellent group of men. One of them who spent three years in Germany is looked upon as possibly the best all-round student at the college. He edits the college literary magazine and the college annual. He manages the U. A. C. Teacher's Placement Bureau. Furthermore, he holds the state record for the two-mile run. In spite of all these things he finds time to take an active part in social life of the school. Another fellow who is only a freshmen this year, is reaping a financial reward from what he learned while on his mission. He did his preaching in Mexico and is now on the college pay roll as an instructor of Spanish. He is in the enviable position of having some employment which will enable him to go through college, unaided, without having to quit from time to time to earn money. Another man displayed such excellence in scholarship when he

93 2 IMPROVEMENT ERA came back that he obtained a position as student assistant in biology. By dint of hard work he had soon fitted himself for a position in the United States Biological Survey. Now he is the chief of rodent control in southeastern Idaho. Incidentally, he also finds himself well able to support his wife whom he acquired during the first years after his return. But biology is not all he knows. He gives one the feeling that he has seen and comprehended much of the world. To talk to him is as refreshing as a draught of Spring air. Every college needs more of his kind. These missionaries, of course, are the most outstanding. But there are almost two score more of them who are conscientious, de- pendable students. They form a group which "jacks up" the stand- ards of the college life, both in scholarship and in social activity. In general they know where they are going and they lose no time in trying to get there. The desirable effect which such an able, purposeful group has on the body of students in general can hardly be rated too highly. Logan, Utah To A Butterfly- One season past, a lovely creature thou, Crawling, painfully, over branch and bough, Now, like a flashing jewel, come drifting by, Seeking nectared flower, the sun-kissed sky. The ornate pattern of thy out-spread wings Powdered with star dust, wrought in golden rings, Or folded, as some painted sail one sees Swaying, in graceful dips, before the breeze. A work of beauty art thou — butterfly! A royal spendthrift, soon, alas, to die, And yet, in thy brief span, adorn a tale — This upward surge of life must needs prevail. Each, in due season, soars from earth to sky. Salt Lake City, Utah HENRY F. KlRKHAM