: A Girl's Student Days and After by Marks Jeannette Augustus Woolley Mary Emma Commentator - Young women United States; Students United States

@FreeBooksTue 06 Jun, 2023

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THE GIRL AND THE SCHOOL

Inside school or college the girl is in several ways responsible for the atmosphere. Merely in her conversation she can be of service or dis-service. It may be simply a good joke which she is telling, but if the joke misrepresents the school she will, perhaps, do lasting harm. If she is hypercritical--and there is nothing so contagious as criticism--she influences people in the direction of her thought; she sets a current of criticism in motion. A student frequently gives vent to an opinion that is only half-baked--it is well, by the way, to make zwieback of all our opinions before we pass them around as edible--about courses and instructors. She does not realize that some opinions to be worth anything must be the result of a long process of baking, that a nibble from the corner of a four months' or nine months' course will not, however understandingly it may be Fletcherized, tell you whether the course is going to be fruit cake, meringue or common soda crackers. She may think that she herself is so unimportant that what she says can't matter, or she may not mean what she says and be merely letting off steam. Nevertheless her influence is exerted. Some one showed an old lady, who had never been known to say anything in the least critical of any human being, the picture of a very fat man prominent in public life. She looked at it a moment, and then said sweetly: "My, isn't he plump!" If only there were more old and young ladies like that dear soul!

There is another kind of conversation which may not be ill-natured and yet does harm. Idle gossiping, talking about things that are not worth while or speculating about affairs which are not our business and of which we know little or nothing. Akin to this is fashionably slangy conversation concerning the latest thing in books, magazine articles, trivial plays. For even the "tone" of school or college conversation a student is responsible. She can make her school seem cheap or cultivated. The remarks which visitors overhear as they go from room to room or from building to building are likely to indicate the "tone" of an institution. A catalogue may say all it pleases about a school but in the end the school is judged by the women it educates and sends out, even as a tree is known by its fruit. Cultivated, strong women are worth more in advertisement than all the printed material in the world, however laudatory.

When a girl has received everything her Alma Mater has to give, she has no right to be untrue to its fundamental aims and ideals, or to misrepresent it in any way, either by what she says or by her own behaviour. Every student in a large institution is in a sense a pensioner. No student can pay for what is given to her. Is it not a poor return for her to be reflecting dishonour rather than honour upon her school?

There is a certain social selfishness in the way some students take their opportunities for granted without realizing that there are thousands and hundreds of thousands of girls who would give all that they possess for a tithe of such riches. Also, because of the sacrifice which is being made for them at home girls are selfish in taking their school or college life carelessly. The school has to bear much of the responsibility for the individual failure. But of this the student who is failing rarely thinks. Parents hold an institution to blame if it does not do for their child what they expect it to do, when it may be the girl who is at fault.

While she is still in school the girl discharges part of this obligation by realizing what is best for her school as an institution. A college or a big school is no place for vocal soloists. Its life is the life of an orchestra, of many instruments playing together. The student's sense of responsibility is shown by her attitude towards the corporate government and administration of the school. Instead of regarding the laws of her school as natural enemies, chafing against them, making fun of them or evading them if possible, she has a duty in fulfilling them. The consciousness of this responsibility is the very heart and soul of the student self-government movement, for it recognizes not only the obligation placed upon its members by an institution, but also the wide influence one girl may have on others. Student government knows that upper class girls can determine the spirit of the under classes. Even looking at the matter from the lightest point of view, respectful and law-abiding ways are always well-bred ways.

The school considers not only scholarship but also the sum of all that it is, its culture, its attainment, its moral force, as these elements are expressed in its living members, its students and its teachers--in short, its idealism. Idealism is having one's life governed by ideals, and an ideal is a perfect conception of that which is good, beautiful and true. If the girl's life is not governed by ideals, how, then, can the school hope to have its idealism live or grow? Frequently students think of the ideals of college or school as of something outside themselves, more or less intangible, with which they may or may not be concerned. Students cannot do their institution a greater injury than by harbouring such a thought, for if their sense of responsibility will only make the idea of the school personal, then indeed will the school be like that house upon which the rains descended and the winds blew but it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock.

FRIENDSHIPS

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."

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.

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