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.