Word: pre
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...THIRD day at Harvard, in the fall of 1975, I went upstairs in my dorm to get advice from a woman who seemed to have a strong grasp on her intended course of study. I was wondering whether I should take a certain chemistry course; she was a pre-med, and thus seemed a logical person to ask. We talked about my problem for a while, and then she told me she was trying to decide whether to take an introductory calculus course that would repeat a course she had taken in high school but had not understood very well...
This woman was a little scary, and I didn't find much more occasion to talk with her, but she epitomized the pre-professionalism of the times. Since the '60s, with the exception of those taking the business school route, the numbers of students choosing to become doctors and lawyers and such have not changed much--but the intensity with which they pursue their goals has. Starting in 1972, the percentage of graduating seniors planning to go on to careers in business climbed from a low of 6 per cent to a high of 15 per cent...
Although with the end of the draft it became possible for a man to take time off from College and not end up in a rice paddy carrying an M-16, there was a pervasive feeling in the early years of the decade--especially among the strongly pre-professional--that leave-taking displayed some kind of weakness or foolish vacillation. Deborah Hughes-Hallet, who has taught math and advised undergraduates in the sciences since 1969, says that even now, when she suggests that undecided students take leaves of absence, "they almost invariably draw themselves up to their full height...
...numbers show a growing willingness to experiment, to try out different possibilities before fixing permanently on a certain advanced degree, or title, as a goal. Jewett's impressions agree; he has the feeling that pre-professionalism peaked a year or two ago. And so it is now, following the reaction and retrenchment of the mid-'70s, that the lasting impact on students of the earlier rebellion is really felt...
...requirements of the department for concentrators are more than those for a pre-med (biology major...