Homesickness and friendships, how much and how vivid a part they play in
the first year, or years, of school life! An old coloured physician was
asked about a certain patient who was very ill. "I'll tell you de truf,"
was the reply. "Widout any perception, Phoebe Pamela may die and she may
get well; dere's considerable danger bofe ways." I will tell you one
truth about the first year of school life: friends there will surely be,
and homesickness there is likely to be,--there is "considerable danger
both ways."
Even if a girl has never been away from home before, it is possible that
she will not suffer from homesickness. It is probable, however, that the
new surroundings in which the girl finds herself, and the separation
from those who are the centre of her personal life, will bring on an
attack of this most painful malady. It takes time to fit comfortably
into the new surroundings, and meanwhile everything is strange.
Homesickness is not to be laughed at, but it must be less deadly, less
fatal than some people think it, or there would not be so many
recoveries. Girls often weep when they enter school, and then after the
long dreary years are really over, lived through, and the poor forlorn
freshman is metamorphosed into the senior, they weep again. Is it not
strange that these seniors who wept on entering school should weep also
when leaving it? It looks in the end as if Phoebe Pamela were sure to
get well. Yet the effort to get well requires a fine effort at
self-control,--an effort every girl is the better for making, although
it may take everything plucky in a girl to "back up" her intention to
remain in school. The earlier the student considers this question of
homesickness the better. Let her face its possibilities before she goes
away from home, and make up her mind, if she is attacked, resolutely to
overcome it. If it comes, let her never give up the struggle, for, by
giving in, she will only lose ground in every way, morally, socially,
intellectually. By her cowardice she will part with what she can never
recover later.
Many temptations follow in the wake of homesickness, and the most
serious of all is to make friends too rapidly. It may be laid down as a
rule that a friendship formed on this stop-gap principle, and too
rapidly, is not likely to endure. Such a friendship is not a sane or a
wise relation, for friendship is like scholarship: if it is worth
anything at all it comes slowly. Impulsive, quickly forced friendships
are not wise investments; the very fact that they come so quickly
implies an unbalanced state of idealizing, or lack of self-control. This
does not mean that one is not to form pleasant acquaintances from the
very beginning of the school life. Acquaintanceship always holds
something in reserve and is the safest prelude to a deeper and more
vital friendship.
There is no denying that there is great temptation to violent
admirations and attractions in school. In the first place, in school or
college the girl is brought into contact with a large circle of people
who are immensely interesting to her. The whole atmosphere is full of
novelty, of the unusual. Some of the students and teachers whom she
meets for the first time represent a broader experience, it may be, than
her own home life has given her. They are often new types and new types
are always interesting.
I shall say nothing of the idealism of friendship--it plays its part in
other books. It would seem sometimes as if almost too much emphasis had
been placed upon the making of friendships in school,--friendship which
is, after all, but a by-product, the most valuable it is true,
nevertheless a by-product of the life. Wholly practical are the tests of
friendship which I shall give. In the first place a friend is too
absorbing who takes all of one's interest to the exclusion of
everything else: there should be interest in other people, other
activities as well as in one's work. Such a friendship can only make a
girl forget for what she has come to school. The new relation which
disposes one to look with less respect and affection upon one's own
people and home--and they, be it remembered, have stood the most
valuable test of all, the test of time--cannot be a good influence. It
may be said in general that an association which is developing the less
fine traits in one's character, giving emphasis to the less worthy
sides, should be relinquished immediately, even at the cost of much
heartache. The heartache will be only temporary; the bad influence might
become permanent. On the other hand, since friendship is giving as well
as taking, one does well to consider the fact that if one's own part in
it does not tell for good, there is just as much reason for stopping the
friendship where it is. Some of these associations--and this is a hard
saying, I know--which seem everything at the time are nothing, as the
years will prove. A girl idealizes, and idealizes those who are not
worthy. Inevitably the day comes when she laughs at herself,--if she
does not do worse and pity herself for having been such a goose.
Only a few of the friendships made in school are destined to endure. One
of the foremost of those that last is founded on similarity of interest.
Perhaps it is the girl with whom one has worked side by side in the
laboratory,--a relation formed slowly and on a permanent basis. Many of
the best of friends have come together through community of interests,
and this is a type of friendship for which men have a greater gift than
women.
There is still another type which develops because of some conspicuously
noble or fine quality which proves attractive. Hero worship, this, which
enlarges one's self through the admiration given to another. Then there
is the friendship based on a purely personal attraction, with mutual
respect and self-respect as its dedicated corner-stone. This does not
mean that one cannot see any faults in the friend, or know that one's
own are seen, without losing affection. There is always something flimsy
and insecure about a friendship that simply idealizes. Any relation
should be all the stronger for a frank acknowledgment of its
imperfections. If a girl cares enough she will be willing to admit her
own faults and wish to make herself more worthy to be a friend.
And, finally, there is what might be called the lend-a-hand
friendship,--the relation that springs into existence because of the
need which is seen in another. It is not fair to make a packhorse of
one's friend or to turn one's self into the leaning variety of plant,
but it is fair and wise and right, if one is strong enough to accomplish
the end in view, to lend a hand to another girl who is not making the
best of herself.
Have a good time but do not swear eternal allegiance in this first year
to anybody, however wonderful she may seem. Hold yourself in reserve, if
for no other reason, then on account of the old friends at home, whether
they be kin or no-kin, for they have been true. And remember, as I have
said before, friendship is like scholarship and must by its nature come
slowly.