Before it is too late, at least now that she is leaving school, let her stop to realize that a great deal of the work for an institution is along the line of self-sacrifice, in the gifts given, in the work of its administrators and teachers.  This unselfishness means a financial loss, for business ability might be invested in more lucrative ways; it means a social sacrifice, for there is a certain kind of impersonality which is demanded in work that deals with a continually changing community; it means risk in the great strain put upon physical and nervous strength; it means forgetting one’s self; for the true teacher is willing to be forgotten when she has served others.  What a school may accomplish for its students is its only compensation for all this self-sacrifice.

XII

THE WORK TO BE

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.