#i may still harbor resentment for all the years i spent convincing myself i had no shot

[guess-my-next-obsession]

i spent ages 5-22 convinced i’d marry chris evans so i have the right to say this…

if dakota johnson’s character in The Materialists ends up choosing that white man over my beloved ?????????? over OUR BABY GIRL PEDRO PASCAL ???

[sonofhistory]

mediocre jobs are ok and did robert gould shaw get good grades or no?

Robert Gould Shaw’s education:

When Robert Gould Shaw was a boy, he studied and attended school in West Roxbury where he was influenced by the humanitarianism of Brook Farm intellects. He no longer attended school there by the time he turned nine as he family moved and settled in the north end town of West new Brighton. During this age, it became time for Robert to advance to more challenging studies, his uncle Coolidge Shaw talked his parents, Francis and Sarah into sending the boy to the preparatory school of St. John’ College in Forham, New York. Coolidge felt that a Catholic schooling would be good for his nephew. 

However, Robert’s first letter home in June of 1850 reflects a very different take on what he was experiencing. “I wish you hadn’t sent me here … for I hate it like everything.” In September, Robert continued in his rage “I hate Fordham” and added a note about his professor: “My old teacher scolded me today because I didn’t do something he didn’t tell me to do, I hate him.” He confided that his homesickness embarrassed him when he cried in front of his classmates. There is no evidence he was punished by “Father Regnier” or known as the one “who ships the boys” but he did run away twice and told his parents in October, “I’d rather do anything than stay here.” 

Nevertheless, he remained at Fordham for the entire semester studying French, Spanish, Latin and Greek while also continuing his lessons on the violin. While Robert attended to his schooling, his parents planned an extended tour of Europe for the entire family. In January, 1851, Robert thankfully said goodbye to Fordham forever and sailed from the New York harbor. 

For the next five years, Robert studied, and developed a “wanderlust” he never lost, and lived through the years of thirteen and eighteen while there. Beginning in October of that year, he was sent to the boarding school of Monster and Madame Roulet in Neuchatel, Switzerland. Still, while he enjoyed his time here, he usually homesick tendencies caught up to him and he began to miss his parents. He was pleased that “M and Mme. Roulet are very kind … “ but wrote “I hate to be here. I keep thinking what you are all doing.” During his time there he built a close relationship with Mr. Roulet whom he regarded as a friend. 

Roulet administered a rigorous curriculum. Weekly, Robert studied geometry, algebra, and geology as well as six languages–he concentrated on French and German. He took parts in student theater productions and kept up his usually lessons on the violin and piano. In good weather, he would be taking with his teacher on tours in France and Switzerland. Roulet nurtured his students though he fostered a nasty temper occasionally. Shaw told his mother, “Roulet hardly ever gets mad about the lessons, but only when we break some of the rules, or are impolite. But when he does get angry he’s just like the wolf.” Robert never saw him punish anyone and rather, “he only scolds.” Robert resented having to explain where and when and why every time he wanted to go for a walk or take a horseback ride or visit town. After a year of explanations, Robert remarked, “I shall be very glad to have more freedom when I leave here.”

During his next two years in the city, Robert struggled. He had grown up around ardent abolitionist but now he began to evaluate whether he could live up to the level of his parent’ dedication to the social reform. Robert read while in the school Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Robert questioned his parents on comparative studies and statistics concerning number of blacks and whites in the South. Shaw responded after finding out of the “Fugitive Slave Law” that he hoped Russian would read Uncle Tom’s Cabin and that is will “help them set their slaves free.” He inquired into whether the royalists of Rome would ban the book because of its republican principals. He resigned himself for the time with a frank sentence, “I don’t see how one man could do much against slavery.”

Robert also questioned religion. He received a letter from one of his St. John’s teacher priests who feared for his education at Roulet’s and expressed hope that Robert would go to school in Italy. Robert scoffed back that “He meant that he’s afraid I won’t be converted to Catholicism, because he hopes I’d be left in the clothes of the Jesuits at Rome, and would become catholic right off.” Roulet attempted to convince Robert that he should take religion classes and attend church regularly, but he fired back angrily to his parents that it was not Roulet’s business if he were “good or bad” and that those students who do go are not “any better than me and that’s what I told them.” Robert never ended up devoting himself to religion or a church. 

Robert also began to take up career goals. He did not want to be a reformer. He did not mention gaining an education at Harvard and instead, to his parents, in one verse while most likely caused them a little concern, said: “I think I should like to go to West Point.” HIs mother replied of her disapproval and he commented, insisting that “I think I should like it and what else can I do? I can’t think of any thing else, for I don’t want to be a Merchant, or Doctor, or Minister, or any thing like that.”

During the summer of 1855, Shaw traveled with Roulet throughout Switzerland and bid farewell as school began again in September. He spent the next ten months with his family at their rented house in Sorrento on the Malfi peninsula south of Naples. The family also toured Rome, Florence and Heidelberg. After celebrating the Fourth of July with his family, Robert took a trip with his father to Hanover, Germany where he continued his education for two years via private tutors. The first time of freedom in his life caused him to be rather reckless as he was not homesick and commented to his mother “how big inside I’ve got since I’ve been here. I’m at least five years older then when I came.” In his impulsiveness, he spent all of his allowance and had to ask his mother for more.  In an arrogant statement he said, “I have no taste for anything excepting amusing myself!” and that he’d rather be a chimneysweep then a merchant. 

Despite this, he kept up his studies. From nine in the morning the two in the after family he studied with an occasional late afternoon class. Most nights he was in place for the seven in the evening curtain at the theater, opera or concert. He loved literature and music. He also became a regular at “fancy-balls where he made friends. Sometimes he drank too much champagne and said “its almost impossible not to drink a good deal, because there is so much good wine here.” He took a trip to Norway by himself as well with other students he knew and only informed his parents once he returned. Often he said that his purse was “getting hollow cheeks again.” He sugar coated it, however, and thought his mother’s scoldings were a bit too harsh as he commented to his father. 

Robert finally decided on Harvard and reassured his parents that his studies were going well. Over confident, he thought he would have no trouble passing the entrance examinations in the fall of 1856. He hoped he might be able to enter as a junior but would enter no lower than a sophomore. His parents suggested his might want a tutor to push him through his intensive studies in the summer before examinations. Robert returned to America in may of 1856 and passed the Harvard entrance examinations which he rated as “very easy.” Spoiled by his elaborate European education, he found everything “horridly stupid here and just like a school.” He said he had to again “ask if he wanted to go anywhere.”

By October he discovered he had not prepared well for Harvard’s academic demands and threatened to leave school to “go into a store” if “at the end of the year I stand very low.” His dislike of discipline transferred over, “I hate Cambridge,” he said. He considered switching to Columbia or New York University but did not. Robert stayed in school but never pulled himself academically to the top half of his class. He reported the Class of 1860 to the staff was “the latest class they have had for a long while.” 

He excelled, however, in extracurricular activities. he enjoyed playing “football” but with fifty to seventy men on a team all engaged at once, he was beaten up regularly by older players. In his second year he joined about club and participated in rowing raced with other clubs. He took boxing lessons and played the violin well enough to join a musical group, the Pierians, who played twice a week. he was always inclined to music. He lavished in the social hour and other societies sponsored. His best friend at Harvard was his cousin Harry Russell. Shaw roomed with the football and rowing champion, Caspar Croninshield. He would also skip school on the weekends to sneak off with his friend’s uncle.