stylistic:tone, information:extraction, stylistic:style_transfer, linguistic:voice_change, structural:expansion
Education

Roosevelt was homeschooled. Biographer H. W. Brands wrote that, "The most obvious drawback...was uneven coverage of...various areas of...knowledge." He was solid in geography and bright in history, biology, French, and German; however, he struggled in mathematics and the classical languages.

In September 1876, he entered Harvard College. His father instructed him to, "take care of your morals first, your health next, and finally your studies." His father's sudden death in 1878 devastated Roosevelt. He inherited $60,000 (equivalent to $1,894,345 in 2023), enough on which he could live comfortably for the rest of his life.

His father, a devout Presbyterian, regularly led the family in prayers. Young Theodore emulated him by teaching Sunday School for more than three years at Christ Church in Cambridge. When the minister at Christ Church, which was an Episcopal church, eventually insisted he become an Episcopalian to continue teaching, Roosevelt declined, and began teaching a mission class in a poor section of Cambridge.

Roosevelt did well in science, philosophy, and rhetoric courses but struggled in Latin and Greek. He studied biology intently and was already an accomplished naturalist and a published ornithologist. He read prodigiously with an almost photographic memory. Roosevelt participated in rowing and boxing, and was a member of the Alpha Delta Phi literary society, the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, and the prestigious Porcellian Club. In 1880, Roosevelt graduated Phi Beta Kappa (22nd of 177) with an A.B. magna cum laude. Henry F. Pringle wrote:

Roosevelt, attempting to analyze his college career and weigh the benefits he had received, felt that he had obtained little from Harvard. He had been depressed by the formalistic treatment of many subjects, by the rigidity, the attention to minutiae that were important in themselves, but which somehow were never linked up with the whole.

Roosevelt gave up his plan of studying natural science and attended Columbia Law School, moving back into his family's home in New York. Although Roosevelt was an able student, he found law to be irrational. Determined to enter politics, Roosevelt began attending meetings at Morton Hall, the headquarters of New York's 21st District Republican Association. Though Roosevelt's father had been a prominent member of the Republican Party, Roosevelt made an unorthodox career choice for someone of his class, as most of Roosevelt's peers refrained from becoming too closely involved in politics. Roosevelt found allies in the local Republican Party and defeated a Republican state assemblyman tied to the political machine of Senator Roscoe Conkling closely. After his election victory, Roosevelt dropped out of law school, later saying, "I intended to be one of the governing class."