THE IDEAL FRESHMAN
Freshman year, the beginning year, the year of new experiences, new delights, new work, new friends, new surroundings; the year that may mean much to a girl, that may answer some of the questions that have lain long in heart and mind, that will surely reveal her more clearly to herself, that may make her understand others better and help her to guess something of the riddle of the years to come!
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.
This is the girl who goes into school in much the same spirit that she would enter upon a larger life. She is not a prig and she is not a dig, but she knows there are responsibilities to be met and she meets them. She expects to have to think about the new conditions in which she finds herself and to adjust herself to them, and she does it. She knows the meaning of the team-play spirit and she takes her place quietly on the team, one among many, and both works and plays with respect for the rights and positions of others. It is in the temper of the words sometimes stamped upon the coins of our country—E Pluribus Unum—that she makes a success of her school life. She knows that not only is our country bigger than any one of its states, but also that every school is bigger than any one of its members whether teacher or student. In a small family at home conditions have been more or less made for her, just as they are for other girls. Yet she knows that the school life is complicated and complex, and it is impossible for her to feel neglected where a more self-centred or spoiled girl fails to see that in this new life she is called upon to play a minor part but nevertheless a part upon which the school must rely for its esprit de corps. She goes with ease from the somewhat unmethodical life of the home to the highly organized routine of the school because she understands the meaning of the word "team-play." She has the coöperative spirit.
Yet there are other girls, too, in this school which the freshman is entering. There is the student who errs on the side of leading too workaday a life, and in so doing has lost something of the buoyancy and breadth and "snap" which would make her associations and her work fresher and more vigorous. "The Grind," she has been called, and if she recognize herself in this sketch, let her take care to reach out for a bigger and fuller life than she is leading. And there is, too, the selfish student whose "class-spirit" is self-spirit; and the girl who is not selfish but who uses herself up in too many interests, dramatic, athletic, society, philanthropic and in a dozen others. She is probably over-conscientious, a good girl in every way, but in doing too much she loses sight of the real aim of her school life. To these must be added another student,—the freshman who skims the surface, and is, when she gets out, where she was when she entered—no, not quite so far along, for she has slipped back. She is selfish, relying upon the patience and burden-bearing capacity of her father and mother, as well as the school.
No doubt every girl would meet her obligations squarely if she realized what was the underlying significance of the freshman year; the school life would surely be approached with a conscientious purpose. What a girl gets in school will much depend upon what she has to give. No girl is there simply to have a good time or merely to learn things out of books. Nor is she there to fill in the interim between childhood and young womanhood, when one will go into society, another marry, and a third take up some wage-earning career. No, she is there to carry life forward in the deepest, truest sense; and the longer she can have to get an education and to make the best of the opportunities of school and college life, the richer and fuller her after-years will be. Both middle life and old age will be deeper and stronger. Let us think about these girls, let us think about what it means to be a freshman, and so lessen our difficulties and increase our pleasures; let us have a big conception,—a large ideal always at heart—of what the first year should be, and beginning well we shall be the more likely to end well.