Freshman year, the beginning year, the year of new experiences, new
delights, new work, new friends, new surroundings; the year that may
mean much to a girl, that may answer some of the questions that have
lain long in heart and mind, that will surely reveal her more clearly to
herself, that may make her understand others better and help her to
guess something of the riddle of the years to come!
What has the student done to get ready for this year? If she were going
camping she would know that certain things were necessary to make the
expedition a success. With what excitement and pleasure, what thoughts
of jolly camp-fires, deep, sweet-smelling forests, and long days afoot,
she would prepare everything. She would not let any one else do this for
her, for that would mean losing too much of the fun. But the _freshman
year_, what about the thinking and planning for that, also an expedition
into a new world, and a veritable adventure of a vast deal more
importance than a few days or weeks of camping? Would she enter forests
upon whose trees the camp-fires throw many shadows, follow the stream
that cleaves its way through the woods, go along the runway of deer or
caribou or moose, with a mind to all intents and purposes a blank? No,
her mind would be vivid with thoughts and interests.
With the same keen attention should she enter the new year at school or
college, and as she passes through it, thinking about all that comes to
her, she will find it growing less and less difficult and more and more
friendly. She will consider what the freshman year is to be like, think
of what sorts of girls she is to meet and make friends with, what the
work will be, what she may expect in good times from this new adventure,
and, thoughtful about it all, make the minimum of mistakes and get the
maximum of benefit.
Here come some of the girls who are entering school and college with
her--bright-haired, dark-haired, rosy or pale, tall and thin, fat and
short, clever and average, desirable and undesirable,--in fact, all
sorts and conditions of girls. Who is to be the leader of them all? She
is the _ideal freshman_, a nice, well-set-up girl who does not think too
much of herself, who is not self-conscious, and who does not forget for
what she is sent to school. Despite the temptations of school life she
uses her days wisely and well. She does not isolate herself, for she
sees the plan and value of the recreative side of school-days. She is
already laying the foundations for a successful, useful, normal
existence, establishing confidence at the outset and not handicapping
herself through her whole course by making people lose their faith in
her. Our _ideal freshman_ may be the girl who is to do distinguished
work; she may be the student who does her best; and because it is her
best, the work, though not brilliant, is distinguished by virtue of her
effort. She may be the girl who is to make a happy home life through her
poise and earnestness and common sense. Whoever she is, in any event in
learning to do her best she is winning nine-tenths of the battle of a
successful career. It is she, attractive, able, earnest, with the
"fair-play" or team-play spirit in all she does, true to herself and to
others, whom every school wants, whose unconscious influence is so great
in building up the morale of any school. Mark this girl and follow her,
for she is worthy of your hero worship.
This is the girl who goes into school in much the same spirit that she
would enter upon a larger life. She is not a prig and she is not a dig,
but she knows there are responsibilities to be met and she meets them.
She expects to have to think about the new conditions in which she finds
herself and to adjust herself to them, and she does it. She knows the
meaning of the team-play spirit and she takes her place quietly on the
team, one among many, and both works and plays with respect for the
rights and positions of others. It is in the temper of the words
sometimes stamped upon the coins of our country--_E Pluribus Unum_--that
she makes a success of her school life. She knows that not only is our
country bigger than any one of its states, but also that every school is
bigger than any one of its members whether teacher or student. In a
small family at home conditions have been more or less made for her,
just as they are for other girls. Yet she knows that the school life is
complicated and complex, and it is impossible for her to feel neglected
where a more self-centred or spoiled girl fails to see that in this new
life she is called upon to play a minor part but nevertheless a part
upon which the school must rely for its _esprit de corps_. She goes with
ease from the somewhat unmethodical life of the home to the highly
organized routine of the school because she understands the meaning of
the word "team-play." She has the coöperative spirit.
Yet there are other girls, too, in this school which the freshman is
entering. There is the student who errs on the side of leading too
workaday a life, and in so doing has lost something of the buoyancy and
breadth and "snap" which would make her associations and her work
fresher and more vigorous. "The Grind," she has been called, and if she
recognize herself in this sketch, let her take care to reach out for a
bigger and fuller life than she is leading. And there is, too, the
selfish student whose "class-spirit" is self-spirit; and the girl who is
not selfish but who uses herself up in too many interests, dramatic,
athletic, society, philanthropic and in a dozen others. She is probably
over-conscientious, a good girl in every way, but in doing too much she
loses sight of the real aim of her school life. To these must be added
another student,--the freshman who skims the surface, and is, when she
gets out, where she was when she entered--no, not quite so far along,
for she has slipped back. She is selfish, relying upon the patience and
burden-bearing capacity of her father and mother, as well as the school.
No doubt every girl would meet her obligations squarely if she realized
what was the underlying significance of the freshman year; the school
life would surely be approached with a conscientious purpose. What a
girl gets in school will much depend upon what she has to give. No girl
is there simply to have a good time or merely to learn things out of
books. Nor is she there to fill in the interim between childhood and
young womanhood, when one will go into society, another marry, and a
third take up some wage-earning career. No, she is there to carry life
forward in the deepest, truest sense; and the longer she can have to get
an education and to make the best of the opportunities of school and
college life, the richer and fuller her after-years will be. Both middle
life and old age will be deeper and stronger. Let us think about these
girls, let us think about what it means to be a freshman, and so lessen
our difficulties and increase our pleasures; let us have a big
conception,--a large ideal always at heart--of what the _first year_
should be, and beginning well we shall be the more likely to end well.