After working so hard to earn admission to Radcliffe, Keller's actual experience of being at college was a bit of a let down. In Chapter 20 of The Story of My Life, Keller tells the story of the tremendous amounts of work she had to do to keep up in her classes, which were demanding even for sighted and hearing persons. She writes:
Gradually I began to find that there were disadvantages in going to college. The one I felt and still feel most is lack of time. I used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and I....But in college there is no time to commune with one's thoughts. One goes to college to learn, it seems, not to think.
While she praises some of her professors, in particular her Shakespeare teacher, George Kittredge, Keller often longs to "sweep away half the things I am expected to learn; for the overtaxed mind cannot enjoy the treasure it has secured at the greatest cost." Exams were a special challenge; no matter how hard she worked, she never felt prepared.
Although college was not the "universal Athens" she hoped it would be, Keller does say that the chief lesson she learned at Radcliffe was patience: “which teaches us that we should take our education as we would take a walk in the country, leisurely, our minds hospitably open to impressions of every sort....to have knowledge—broad, deep knowledge—is to know true ends from false, and lofty things from low.”
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