Writers 
Before I decided on coming here to Loyola College, I had to do a lot of arguing with myself and with my family and some friends. But first, I had better say what the argument was about. All my family are doctors, all the men, that is—my father, two uncles, and a first cousin—and all of them are good at the business.
When I was a kid, it just never crossed my mind to be a policeman or cowboy. It was doctor all the way, to use the language of the race track where my father takes me now and then when he gets any time off. He once said to me that it was just as well that being a doctor takes so much time, for otherwise he might be a tout.
My marks in school were good enough for me to have some choice in the college I could go to. Naturally the first thing I wanted to know about any college was whether you could get good pre-med work. Everybody knows that you can get good pre-med training at Harvard or the other big universities, and I am aiming at the Harvard Medical School, but a smaller college like this one has to be investigated. I did, and I found out that in the last ten years, 22 per cent of the graduates of Loyola College have gone into medicine, and most of them have studied at medical schools in the top ten or so. Only two men failed to finish, and one of them had a physical breakdown. This record seems to settle the case for Loyola College as a good place for pre-med. I knew, too, that a lot of older men from here had become very successful doctors.
On the faculty here, too, is one famous biologist. In a small place like this you can work pretty close to a big man and watch how he does things and thinks about problems. You see, I think I have learned a lot already, just hearing my father and the family talk about cases and medical problems, and I calculated that the same process of what you might call learning by osmosis (I had high school biology and know about osmosis) could continue for me in a smaller college better than in a big one.
This last paragraph sounds as if I were tied to my family and dependent on them. I admire them, but I don't want to be dependent. That is one reason I didn't go to college near home, or to Stanford, where my family all went and are well remembered for studies and athletics. I wanted to get far away and be on my own so that I would become grown-up. A doctor has to learn responsibility early, or he is no good. The senior honors course here at Loyola College also teaches responsibility, because it requires you to work out a big problem on your own.
I will tell you next post
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