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Describe Helen Keller’s experience at Radcliffe. Why did she say, ‘But college is not the universal Athens I thought it was?’ 

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The first day at Radcliffe was very exciting. She had looked forward to it for years. She started her studies with eagerness and hope. She felt within her the capacity to know all things. The lecture-halls seemed filled with the spirit of the great and the wise. The professors were the embodiment of wisdom. But soon Helen Keller realised that ‘college was not quite the romantic lyceum’ she had imagined. Many of her dreams ‘‘faded into the light of common day.’’ Gradually she began to realise that there were disadvantages in going to college.

Helen soon realised that one goes to college to ‘learn’ and not to ‘think’. In the college, there was no time to communicate with one’s thoughts. In the classroom she was practically alone. The professors were as remote as they were speaking through a telephone. The lectures were spelled in her hand as rapidly as possible. The significance and meaning of the lecturer got lost in her effort to keep in the race. Very few of the books required in the various courses were printed for the blind. She was obliged to have them spelled into her hand. As a result, she took more time to prepare her lessons than other girls. But there were exceptions too. Scholar like Kittredge would loving back Shakespeare ‘‘as if new sight were given to the blind.’’ She felt like the proverbial bull in the china shop. ‘A thousand odds and ends of knowledge came crashing about her head like hailstones.’ Helen discovered that ‘college is not the universal Athens’ she thought it was. There one doesn’t meet the great and wise face to face. One does not even feel their living touch. They seem mummified. But Helen never gave up the precious science of patience. She took her education as she would take a walk in the country, leisurely.

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