Rather than attending a well-known college or major university after high-school graduation from Brooklyn Polytechnic, he continued at that institution, where he obtained a bachelor of arts degree in 1898. During his final year there, he edited the school paper and was class president, valedictorian, and poet. He dreamed of a career in law or as an engineer--each, however, was beyond what he believed he could achieve. Lawyers frequently had to declaim, and Adams was painfully shy--too shy to consider the bar seriously. Engineering necessitated advanced study in math and science, areas in which he felt lacking. After dismissing his first career choices for the shortcomings that he perceived in himself, he enrolled at Yale to study philosophy. It did not prove satisfactory to him. Within a year he left the university and returned to New York, where he took employment as a messenger at the firm for which his father worked. The Yale M.A. frequently mentioned among his accomplishments was obtained by a simple application through the mail in 1900, before that institution established standards which necessitated formalized instruction for the degree. A few years later he made a final attempt at graduate study when he began to take history courses at Columbia University.
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