Dana's experience at Harvard was hardly that of a carefree undergraduate: when his meager funds ran out, he lived with relatives in New Hampshire and Vermont and finally took a teaching job in Scituate, Massachusetts, to earn money for his expenses. During the periods he was able to return to college work, he focused his study on the classics, literature, and philosophy rather than science and mathematics. But his constant reading overtaxed his eyes, and he left after completing two years of college in 1841, giving up his intention of entering the ministry and of studying in Germany. Although a series of treatments helped improve his eyesight in later years, Dana never returned to the practice of reading at night.
While attending Harvard, Dana had developed a strong admiration for the radical social aims of Rev. George Ripley and other Transcendentalists who launched the Brook Farm Institute of Agriculture and Education in 1841 as a practical testing ground for their ideas about cooperative, democratic living in an environment that fostered intellectual growth. By September 1841 Dana had been accepted by the group and was living with them in West Roxbury, Massachusetts.
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