Tom,
Discipline and the Rest of Us
He also studied
three hours a night, every night, and was assigned to the elite section of his
class. He was a math major at a level where they were generating concepts so
original that they had to invent their own names for the stuff.
He did everything
with assured confidence.
Tom was the first member of our college class
to marry, which he did a few days before graduation.
He went on to
earn a doctorate and spent a long career teaching university-level math. He
wrote textbooks that were popular enough over the years to keep him busy
producing revisions.
And he fathered
children who grew into successful adulthood.
I had the mixed
fortune of rooming with Tom for our last two years at Holy Cross. Occasionally
I would try to match Tom’s disciplined evening study hours. Invariably, after a
day or two, though, I would revert to my accustomed life of bull sessions and
coffee breaks leavened by modest doses of class prep.
I gained a lot personally from the
college experience and did well enough academically. Tom did somewhat better:
He was the summa cum laude in a class
of 500.
