Student Woes

Alas, how challenging it can be to adjust to life at the Boston University School of Theology! Even today, some of the challenges talked about in the excerpt below ring true for students. Yet this piece is also of a decidedly different time. It compares the experience of being a student at STH to being on a ship in troubled waters. 

The Methodist Line “Theology” Sends a Wireless Call for Aid 

The last whistle had blown and as the echo slipped away over the tops of the Mount Vernon wharf houses, the boatswain’s crew pulled the mooring rope on board and the giant ship, ‘THEOLOGY,’ slowly slipped her berth and churned her was out into the channel. “REGISTRATION ROCK” and “ROOM ASSIGNMENT LEDGE” were soon passed and the ship’s nose pointed toward the open sea.

There was some grumbling among those who had purchased “JUNIOR CLASS TICKETS,” as the inside staterooms were small and poorly ventilated, while the steerage was damp and stuffy. Otherwise everybody seemed happy as they sprawled out at full length on steamer chairs or gathered into small groups, telling yarns of college days and the times beyond recall.

The fourth day was a busy one for me in the wireless shack. The whirring generator had been constantly answering the prayers and sputtering spark as it called for power to send the ether-winged messages on their way to land. Although it is strictly against the rules of the Wireless Company to repeat the contents of messages sent to strangers, I am going to run the risk—as the messages sent that day were a strange lot:

“Have been sick all the way. Meet me at the dock. We will work out our New Testament Exegesis together.”

Another message sent to the College of Liberal Arts:

“I am awfully lonesome—if the water was not wet I would swim back to you.”

A man with a distressed countenance sent:

“Am three hundred miles south of a ‘PASSING GRADE’ in ‘CHURCH HISTORY SOUND.’ Very rough and foggy.”

But I must be about my story.

I had just turned into my bunk for a few hours’ sleep after my hard day’s work, when suddenly I was thrown to the floor of my cabin by a mighty impact. A crunching, ripping noise followed as our bow struck. The panels of the wireless cabin fell in upon me, but fortunately the apparatus was uninjured. Soon aster the impact the lights went out all over the ship, and I was in total darkness. Just then the captain’s steward pushed his way through the debris and told me that we were hard and fast upon the “SHOALS OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM.” Turning to my instruments, I switched on the generator, but the dynamo had stopped in the engine room below, there was only one hope and to that I turned. My “BIBLE ACCUMULATORS” were intact, and as I pressed the wireless key, praying God’s blessings, the welcome spark sputtered and crashed once more, calling sharply, S—O—O—Signal of Shipwreck. And then I eagerly listened, but the receiver no answer. Venturing out on the deck, I found the wreckage terrible. Just outside my door lay the mangled forms of two men, the one nearest me having a “FRACTURED THEOLOGY,” while his neighbor was writing and groaning in a convulsion of “HEBREWITIS.” Sick with horror I made my way forward to the captain’s house, where I found the few passagers who has survived assembled. By the appearance of one young man one could easily see that he formerly possessed a beautiful “THEORY” but now it was bruised and scarred by a “CHURCH HISTORY SLASH.” Just to one side of this poor fellow was a younger man, I think he was a “THIRD-CLASS PASSENGER,” sobbing piteously, for the nervous strain had brought on an attack of “HYMNOLOGY.” The ship’s physician, however, found a can of “VOICE BUILDING SALVE” in his medical cabinet, which he speedily applied. It was morning now. Undaunted by the “FOG OF PHILOSOPHICAL SPECULATION,” the sun mounted the sky as it has been doing for so many years. The splendor of the early morn brought cheer to the heart of one of “THE PROPHETS” at least, for he mounted a coil of “HOMILETICAL ROPE” and pled earnestly for “PRACTICAL THEOLOGY,” bringing such good cheer to each distressed heart that one and all declared wireless aid unnecessary and determined to float the ship by application of “PSYCHOLOGICAL and PEDAGOGICAL PRINCIPLES.”