Desire Armed

Apparently, Stephen Crane didn't much care for college. He spent most of his short time at Syracuse University playing baseball (he was a decent shortstop). Two years after he dropped out when his name was beginning to be know as a writer, he reflected on his time in school in the following letter.

As far as myself and my own meagre success are concerned, I began the battle of life with no talent, no equipment, but with ardent admiration and desire. I did little work at school, but confined my abilities, such as they were, to the diamond. Not that I disliked books, but the cut-and-dried curriculum of the college did not appeal to me. Humanity was a much more interesting study. When I ought to have been at recitations I was studying faces on the streets, and when I ought to have been studying my next day's lessons I was watching the trains roll in and out of the Central station. So, you see, I had, first of all, to recover from college. I had to build up, so to speak. And my chiefest desire was to write plainly and unmistakably, so that all men (and some women) might read and understand. That to my mind is good writing. There is a great deal of labor connected with literature. I think that is the hardest thing about it. There is nothing to respect in art save one's own opinion of it.