Now we come again to that question, “Shall I go to college?” If you are going to make a strenuous attempt to become a writer, the answer is yes, by all means. Even if after leaving college, and after a year’s trial at newspaper work, you find the petty details disagreeable and determine to drop the work, the college experience will be valuable to you, for your tastes show that in some line of intellectual work, you will be a success. And you will finally drop into just the vocation you are intended for, and finally make good. If the inclinations of your tastes are towards mechanics, or electrical engineering, if every bit of your studies at the high school where language, literature or logic was a disagreeable task――if you fairly hated such studies――don’t think of going to a classical college. In such a case what you need is a technical education. If you have the mechanical or scientific mind a course at a technical school puts you at once in the position to DO. In art, music, literature, however, the situation is somewhat different. Take the case of one who desires to be a writer, and the facts are the same for the other arts. A college education will not make a writer out of anyone. Most men could spend their whole lives studying HOW to write, but in the end never be ABLE to write. In other words, a college education simply gives you the tools for writing and shows you how to use these tools. The tools for writing are such lines of reading, thinking and verbal construction as education gives you. Teaching you how to think clearly, calmly and justly, is what the college does for you. But if you have no original thinking powers, of what use are all these tools to you? You may have exceptional brain power, thinking qualities, but not along those lines necessary to make a successful writer, and so you are at a loss to know how to apply the tools given you. If you still struggle along in this false position you soon sink to the hack writer, the mind becomes clouded by failures and then comes the “down and out” state too often seen in those who have made the mistake of trying to be what they could never be.