“Seven years of college down the drain!” – Bluto in the movie Animal House
Originally posted 27 Feb 2014. Baldwin Rockett’s father-in-law, Jacob Ware, grew up in Menheniot, Cornwall, England. When he was about 20, he enrolled at All Soul’s College in Oxford, England, in March 1674/75. Even though Jacob appears to be the first born and his father was a “gentleman” (landed gentry) was it the call of God or of wanderlust that led him to become an Anglican priest? At that time, the Church of England was concerned about how their flocks in the colonies were morally going astray, even so much as to ignore going to church! Fewer parishioners meant fewer tithes. To counter this, the Church of England agreed to pay for the costs of the education and for passage across the pond if the student would commit to serving the Church while in the colonies. I can’t help but think of modern-day programs at colleges where expenses will be paid if you agree to study medicine, science, or math in exchange for two years of your service in a rural community after graduation. My daughter Holly is interested in nursing, and in our area, there’s a shortage of nurses. With the rising costs of a college education, perhaps she should follow Jacob’s lead and look into one of these expense-paid programs to become a rural nurse after graduation!
Like Jacob, Holly will be working and mostly paying for her way through college. When Jacob entered college in 1675, he signed in his own handwriting:
" Jacobus Ware e Coll: Om: An: pau: fil: "
Pauper means that he worked his way through school and was not financed. Holly worries about being a pauper when she graduates and starts paying back school loans! Sure there are alternatives like community college, but I want her to experience more than two years in a class room and then immediately start working. College years are vibrant and fun with so many people about the same age, all focused on graduating and their futures, and looking for fun things to do when they aren’t studying hard! That’s an incredible mixture when combined with freedom from home (many times in a new town) and less rigid school schedules. That’s when real college life begins.
It’s not like home, but that’s part of the draw. If Holly starts out in one of the old freshman dorms, her room will be very small and shared with one other girl: one chair, a small table against a wall, small closet, one window, a mini microwave sitting on top of a mini refrigerator, and a mirror over the small table. Sounds like the description of a dorm room from All Soul’s around 1791:
“…if we may judge from contemporary cuts, that show a
few chairs, a small table with central leg, a cap and
gown on the wall, an inkhorn hanging by the window, a
pair of bellows and tongs by the fire, and over the
mantel-piece a picture or mirror…”
But, I doubt she’ll spend much time in her tiny room. In addition to college football, she’ll just be discovering a whole new world of social opportunities – so many new things to do, new ideas to consider, new places to see and all of those new faces – hundreds of attractive young men all over the place! Parties, dating, drinking songs, and… speaking of songs…
Surely, the students at All Soul’s had heard of the legend of the school’s founder dreaming that a mallard flew out of a drain on the site where the school was to be built. When this actually did happen, a new tradition began of electing a student to be the “Lord Mallard” who would be paraded around in a sedan chair while holding a wooden pole with a “dead” wooden mallard on the tip of it. In 1801, a student looked out of his window and saw the students of All Soul’s carrying torches and raising their rum-coated voices loudly singing the “All Soul’s Mallard Song”, which concludes by inviting those listening to seek out a “watering-hole” just like a mallard seeks out a watery pool:
Then lett us drink and dance a Galliard
in ye Remembrance of ye Mallard,
And as ye Mallard doth in Poole,
Lett's dabble, dive & duck in Boule.
While in college, I remember my granddaddy Louis Rockett (who was an Oxford, MS, university graduate) always asking me (with a wink) how my extracurricular activities were going. I’d roll my eyes and say “Fine”. Looking back on it as a parent thirty years later, and with Holly going to college in the fall, I realize now that “Fine” really is all the information that parents should ever really know!
Sources: All Soul’s College, Oxford University by David Ross on website http://www.britainexpress.com/cities/oxford/all-souls.htm; and
Pages 242-243 from “Old Oxford Days” by Carl Richard Greer describing college life at All Soul’s
No comments:
Post a Comment