 During these undergraduate years, Matthews majored in Greek and Latin, although he later recalled that he was more preoccupied with extra-curricular activities such as sports, music, debate, college publications, and literary societies.Following graduation, Matthews spent six years in Java, part of today's Indonesia, where he taught in one of the Chinese Nationalist schools established there after the fall of the Manchu dynasty in 1911.Matthews saw this experience as pivotal for his own intellectual development, writing in his memoirs