PARAGRAPH FOR PRECIS

College is a preparation for life and life is infinitely wider than work. Life is also leisure and thought and family relationship; it is a play and art and religion; it is sleep and walking and death itself. Not only life is wider than work, it is the only thing that justifies work. If you absorb life into work, you find that there is nothing to work for. Work must always lead beyond itself to a life of the mind by which the fruits of work may be enjoyed. To work is to make a tool of oneself: and man should not only be a tool but also the craftsman behind the tool. All too often, the call of action is so insistent that one has no time for the repose and thought fullness that enters into the building up of inner life: one comes to live altogether outside oneself. And there is the opportunity of an education. College should fill, to some extent, the role of medieval monasteries in which man takes a refuge—an escape and take an inventory of his vital resources away from the bustle of the world and determine his place in the general scheme of things. It is impossible to complete this task in college but it is possible to begin it.

(217 words)

SOLVED PRECIS 

Title: Man’s Complete Life

A college should be the preparation ground for man’s complete life. Man’s complete life does not only lie in work but also in the development of his personality. Work alone should not engage a man’s life; it is the man behind the work whose development is more important and man should work towards that end too. College offers the ground for this development; it does not do the total work but it prepares the ground for that.

(77 words)