Word: grind
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There are many kinds of grinds, Not only the college but the world at large possesses them. There is the longhaired grind, (the sweet girl-graduate) the bald-headed grind, and the grindstone. It is rumored in Chicago that the recent explosion in C - e H - e unearthed two new species, the "hard grind" and the "regular grind." Someone who reads this may call this a "grind," but it is not, it is not even a lie. The elder Pliny was a grind, and Vitellius Spiculus was a grind. But they had brains and it paid them to grind...
...every one who knows what a grind is, least of all the grind himself. If an intermittent cloister-like life of study is what distinguishes the grind, of what use is his life? It is a preparation for greater things coming after, of course. But some grinds do not seem to have any after, except after midnight and high marks. Archimedes was the very Bayard of grinds. But he ground himself into the grave. I remember once hearing that there are grinds at New Haven who are regularly summoned to the Yale "U. 5" for taking too many courses...
This kind of specialism, however, suggests another quite different kind which has not been very generally noticed, but which, nevertheless, is very prevalent here at Harvard and elsewhere. Reference is had to the "grind," and the "swell" (or, to be more modern, the "dude"), and the "professional" athlete. All men, who are properly called by any one of these names, and to whom any other can be applied only with a very slight degree of correctness, are specialists; and their specialism has to be attended with great injury to themselves as well as to the general interests of the college...
...That the grind should be called a pitable specialist doubtless surprises many. And yet a little thought must show the reader how much the grind should be pitied. All study, and that on only two or three subjects and on only their limited class-room phases, no social intercourse, no general reading, no recreation of any sort for mind or body, are things that are not very likely to make such a fully developed manhood as a college education certainly ought to make. To "grind" is, it is true very laudable, but to grind all the time...
...face of outside opinion once more," says the writer, "I would not hesitate to affirm that, with the sole exception of the 'swell,' the 'grind' is the least valuable and useful type of college student. While a rational and vigorous attention to study is the prime object of a college course, the man who devotes himself to study exclusively, withdrawing himself from all human interest, is quite as mistaken an extremist as he who neglects his studies altogether. The former's science of navigation may be excellent, but if he does not know the sun when he sees...