English
While students were eager to learn and were devoted to their studies, professors found roadblocks that had not existed with traditional students at Bryn Mawr. Some instructors remarked on the ways in which the Summer School students struggled with elements of academia that were otherwise taken for granted, as most were not able to skim texts with the ease that college students had. Instead, professors reported students pouring over every page of assigned texts for hours longer than they had expected, meticulously defining every term they were not familiar with. Other students seemed to dismiss the idea of reading at all, instead content with asking questions directly to professors rather than researching it themselves. Eventually however, these students nurtured an appreciation of reading that remained long after their time on campus. The Summer School alumni bulletin, The Christmas Daisy, often included an editorial from either Thomas or Smith suggesting a book for the readers to pick up, or encouraging them to continue to read from the daily paper to keep one’s mind sharp.
Rather than using the College’s collection of books in the library, a special set of texts were set aside for the summer students—over 200 volumes on topics related to their coursework. Attempts were also made by the college to try and commission textbooks for those continuing education, using simpler language than texts written for traditional college students, but covering adult themes rather than stories written for children. Regardless, all the books held by the library were read voraciously by students, with hundreds checked out over the course of a summer, and no recorded losses of borrowed books.
Student writing was also showcased in the literary magazine, published yearly. The name changed often, but was most often titled Shop & School. Students worked with English faculty to collect student writing, often autobiographical poetry or prose, to compile into the publication which was then sold at the end of the summer. Getting written work into the publication was often competitive, and students strove to polish their prose from class and craft pieces that would gain approval from the editors of the magazine. Hilda Smith acted as a censor of sorts to the publication, making sure that material published would not harm the public image of the School or College as a whole.