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• 1 2020-10-09T18:48:54+00:00 English 13 plain 2021-03-22T14:19:56+00:00     English, the other core subject taught to all students alongside Economics, differed greatly from how it was taught to college students during the fall and spring. While students were divided into various class units, fluency in english and literacy sometimes still varied widely among students in the same class. While many students had been reading Dostoevsky, Victor Hugo, and Gogol in their native languages according to their applications, they had never had a chance to gain proficiency and confidence to continue their reading in english. Texts were still read in the classroom, but were also performed aloud during class, including 19th century poetry, folk tales and ballads, classical plays such as Antigone, The Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, and modern plays such as Doll’s House and An Enemy of the People. The focus of many classes, however, was largely on autobiography and the development of confidence in writing and sharing of life stories. Students were encouraged to tell the stories they held close to them, and refine their ability to employ rhetoric and share their ideas with others. It was thought that this ability to articulate each woman’s own experience would help her not only in collective bargaining efforts, but also in her day to day life, where a new sense of self-assurance and confidence could be fostered.
  
      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.