As the semester progresses, you will find yourself settling into new routines. Your schedule will become a familiar pattern and you may be tempted to remain in the comfort of established habits and in the company of established friends. It is easy to fall into the trap of envisioning a class as only a grade, an education as merely instrumental to a career, and university as simply a stepping-stone.

Do not fail to avail yourself of everything the University of Manitoba has to offer you.

Just as it is a place to learn and grow, university is a place to indulge your curiosity and explore your whims. As then-president Sydney E. Smith told students in the Sept. 25, 1936 edition of the Manitoban: “Education does not stop at the intellect.”

As you will find on these pages, the messages from our leaders of today are much the same; they too want you to be the leaders of tomorrow.

Perusing the Manitoban’s archives, 100 years worth as of 2014, one of my favourite discoveries was an advertisement in the September 1920 issue:

“The Manitoban is your paper. If you want to make it a bigger paper, a more interesting paper, a paper with more pages, more pictures, more interest, do so. It is yours. If you want a better paper, support the paper, subscribe to the paper, get out and work for the paper.”

Although a blatantly self-interested plug (we are looking for volunteers), this quote belongs here, in the introduction to the introduction to your school. It illustrates a theme that runs throughout the articles and letters herein. The experience you have at the U of M is yours to mould.