One of the qualities a girl who has completed her school or college life
needs to show for a few months more than anything else is the quality of
adjustment, for she will find that she must continually adjust herself
to new conditions whether they be of the home or elsewhere. All the time
through school she has been in some sense a centre of interest. Her
class has been an important factor in the academic life. When she has
gone home it has been as a school or college girl, and she has been of
interest because she brought that life into the home. But now the
attitude of others towards her is different. She ceases to be the centre
of attention, and for her a day of serious readjustment is at hand.
Perhaps in her own estimate she has seemed even more important than she
really was. She is likely now to swing from a sense of self-importance
to an injured feeling of insignificance, and to a conviction that people
can get along quite as well without her. Up to this time when she has
gone home she has been an honoured visitor. But now that she is at home
to stay, instead of becoming the centre she is merely part of the family
circle with its obligation of doing for others. Her presence in the
household is no longer a novelty.
The swift change from a highly-organized, methodical life to the life of
the home where there is not so much method, is hard for a girl. One
reason it is difficult is that while she may be accomplishing a great
deal that is useful, she seems to be doing nothing and to get nowhere.
She feels as if she were in the midst of a conflict of duties. In school
she has had implanted in her the idea that she must accomplish some
definite thing, and between this objective and the irregular demands of
the home there appears to be more or less clashing. She is confronted by
a problem not easy for any one to solve: how to keep her definiteness
of aim and work, and yet not be self-centred.
Oftentimes when a girl fails to adjust herself to the home life, her
family and friends feel that she is rather selfish in her desire to
carry out her own aims rather than to give them up for new demands.
Frequently the family is as much to blame for not realizing that the
girl needs to be helped back into the old life as the girl is for not
being able to help herself. In the home the spirit of team-play is much
needed. Quite as much as the girl, the family has a lesson to learn in
the art of adjustment and in remembering that this grown-up child isn't
just the same individual she was when she went away several years ago.
They need to realize that the girl may be able to give more to the home
life than she ever did before, but that it will be given in a somewhat
different way.
While she is learning the difficult art of finding her place again, a
great deal depends upon the individual girl, not only in the home but
in the community at large. Sometimes she needs to be reminded that
although she may have had more advantages than those left at home, that
doesn't necessarily make her a superior person. A girl who is inclined
either to pity or to admire herself too greatly should give herself a
vigorous shaking. In the long run she will find it easier to do that on
her own account than to have others do it for her. The friends at home,
or in the church, or in the town, with education of a different kind
coming to them, may have quite as much and more to give her than she to
give them. One indicator of a really cultivated woman is her power to
adapt herself to the circumstances in which she is placed. A gentlewoman
never calls attention to the difference between herself and somebody
else. The woman of broad culture is the one who makes everybody feel at
home with her. If a girl's education has been worth anything at all, it
should give her not a superior, set-aside feeling, but a desire to be
more friendly and useful wherever she may be, and, not placing too much
stress on externals, to look for essentials, to get the full value from
every person and from every experience with which she comes in contact.
Girls go to so many different kinds of homes that it is unlikely that
they will meet the same sorts of difficulties. There is the girl who
goes into the society home, where it is impossible for her to carry out
her ideals without conflict with its social standards. On the other
hand, there is the girl who goes into the very simple home where all the
stress is upon the domestic side of life. And there is the girl who has
to provide part of the family income. Very likely she has the hardest
problem of all. She enters upon some new work, and nine times out of ten
the way is not made easy for her; she is a novice with all the hardships
that come to the novice. Perhaps in the beginning she has met a very
real perplexity in hardly knowing what line of work to take up. She has
no particular interest, no especial talent, no brilliant record, no
powerful friends, no money with which to establish herself. With her it
must be as it is with thinking: she must seize hold of the thing nearest
her. What seems to her a temporary and unsatisfactory expedient will in
many cases open out a path leading to something much broader. At least
she may remember this as consolation: that even that experience of
uncertainty, of indecision, is a part of education, and out of it,
rightly and bravely met, will come some richness for her future life.
The beginning of a work, teaching or anything else, may have to be
rather irksome, indeed, may be exceedingly difficult,--an experience
that will perhaps test staying power to the utmost. When it is too late
to give due appreciation we realize that the work in school which was
planned for us and arranged with our physical and mental well-being in
view was, after all, not so hard as we thought it at the time. We wish
that we had enjoyed our leisure more and complained less.
From the point of view of fatigue, as a secretary, a clerk, a trained
nurse, a teacher, a social worker, the burden may be so great that the
girl is disheartened. She is all the more disheartened because, knowing
that a useful life is a strong, steady pull, the way before her seems
interminable. If she carries her whip inside her--this counsel is not
for those of us who are lazy--she does well to remember that there is a
point beyond which fatigue should not be borne, that is, when it
overdraws her capital of health and nervous energy. Raising pigs is
preferable to a so-called high profession when pig-raising is happily
joined with a reasonable amount of health and security. The pigs and
health together can always pay mortgages and buy necessities for those
dependent upon us and for ourselves. The high calling without health is
like a wet paper-bag: it will hold nothing.
The girl meets with another difficulty in finding out that in almost any
line of work a great deal of time is needed for the mastery of what seem
the simplest principles. No one wants the girl who hasn't had
experience, and nobody seems disposed to take her and give her that
experience. However, we all find some one who is hardy enough or kind
enough to try us; and as every year now there is more effort put into
finding the work girls are most suited to do, there is no excuse for
slipping into teaching as a last resort. Not unnaturally we sometimes
distrust ourselves, especially in taking up an occupation to which we
are not accustomed. And in her new work the girl, uncertain of her
ability to master what she has undertaken, is placed in a position in
which she has the encouragement of neither the school nor the home.
Before, she has put much of the responsibility for her work and life
upon parents and instructors. Now she has to be her own judge and pass
judgment on herself and her work. She has, too, not only to lift her
own weight but the weight of others as well. As she longs for
coöperation, good will and encouragement the value of the team-play
spirit has never seemed so great before.
* * * * *
We do not need to be told to remember the happy and easy experiences of
life. No girl forgets them. What we do need is some one to tell us where
the hard places will be, to warn us, to stiffen our courage and to point
clearly to the uses of hard work and adversity. And although this may
seem like placing another straw on the poor camel's back, it is now time
to say that in her life-work, whether it be in her home or outside, a
girl should be very clear in her mind what her aims and purposes are. If
she is working solely for the praise and commendation of others, she
will often be grievously disappointed. Not in recognition does real
reward lie, but in the work itself. If she wins great popularity she is
likely to find that there is nothing that shifts so quickly and is such
a quicksand. If material wealth is her sole object she will harden into
the thing she seeks and add but another joyless barbarian to a modern
world congratulating itself that barbarism is a thing of the past, and
yet presenting the spectacle of a mammon worship such as has never been
seen before. If gold is her end, and not the means to a nobler end, then
she will find herself constantly sacrificing higher issues to that, and
lowering her one-time ideals. Truly the woman who marries solely for the
comforts of a home, the woman who teaches, or nurses for "pay" alone,
has her reward, and that is in self-destruction. She is a carrier of
barbarism, not of culture; of disease, not of health; of tribulation,
not of joy. The only real reward there can be lies in the idealism, the
joy, the strength of the work done and in a mind and heart conscious of
having done their best.