CIRCLING THE SQUARE

General public opinion notwithstanding, most students here are quite normal. But the staff of the Grant Study takes exception to the old saw that normal people are the most uninteresting of the lot. In a small brick building on Holyoke Street, next to the Hygiene Department, the Study has been trying "to understand better the adjustment of healthy college people" for the past 11 years.

Besides many short-term projects, Grant study's doctors have been gathering information on 252 University alumni--chosen from the classes of '40 and '42--since those men entered their sophomore year here. While full reports are made each year, the project will continue indefinitely. "We are trying to discover the factors that make normal people click and become successful," Dr. Clark Heath, Assistant Director of the Study says. "And, man, as opposed to the white rat, develops very slowly."

When the Study was founded, on a special University fund in 1938, it moved into its present home. The building, which once contained athletic facilities, was remodeled, and offices replaced the squash courts. A swimming pool in the rear is now used by a drama group for rehearsals, with the Study's permission.

The present student body is not neglected by the Study, which also serves as an advisory committee for the Hygiene Department. Difficult cases that the Department cannot handle are sent next door for analysis. "Sometimes it is merely a problem of career adjustment--whether a man should be a journalist or a lawyer--or of deciding whether a student can do college work," Dr. Heath says.

As part of its overall study of normal people, the Grant Staff has compiled data on many other groups since 1938. During the war, the doctors made detailed records on selected Naval Aviation cadets, Communications officers, and chaplains. Later they kept tabs on Theological students and business executives. Last year, using Hygiene Department records and interviews, Grant began a four-year study of problems presented in the Class of '52. If possible the doctors hope to follow up this group as they are doing with men from their original project. Adding information on special cases, and on men with academic troubles, they will correlate this project's findings with the other data at the end of the period.

"There should be studies like this in every University, "Dr. Heath states, "Though we know a great deal about unhealthy people, little is known about the factors that make men become successful."

Some conclusions from the project are already apparent to the staff. "Our work shows an extra-ordinary variability in human beings," Dr. Heath says. "We early gave up the idea that there is such a thing as a normal person."