Do not forget your old friends. When you travel abroad, one of the most important subjects you learn about is America; when you go to college, you learn to know your home. The first ache of homesickness will teach you much. It would mean something very sad if you did not feel it. You would lose one of the tenderest experiences. When the pain softens, you find you understand your home and your dear ones as you never did before. That is the reward of the freshman’s homesickness.
There will quickly come new interests, but do not become so absorbed in them as to lose this new relation to your home. Much as the friends there miss you, your college life may be made a constant pleasure to them. Let us hope that your “preparatory English” has made you a good letter-writer. Write clearly and legibly, with loving care, that your father may not say, “Am I wasting a college education on a girl that can’t even spell?” and that your mother need not sigh, “There is a word I shall have to give up.” The illiteracy of collegians of both sexes I know to be a source of pain to parents who sit deciphering their letters by the evening lamp. It is all a question of your taking trouble, and of your thoughtful consideration for others.
Literacy attained, see that your letter gives pleasure, and that it share with your parents the fun and interest of your college life. See that it “make old hearts young.” Don’t send home a letter without a laugh in it. And pray write occasionally to an uncle or an aunt!
Do not drop your old acquaintance when you go away from home. Perhaps you have some humble village friends, to whom it seems a fine, romantic thing that you have “gone off to college.” Every person whom you know may be in some way pleased and benefited by your experience. There are little girls who are examining you as only a little girl can, and are making up their minds whether they, too, will go to college some day. When you see this bright child peering at you,—there is your chance to be something adorable!
No one follows you with more sympathy than the teachers who have fitted you for college. They have a share in you, remember; for teachers have a reward beyond money in the futures of their pupils.
We speak of college girls as if they had departed for the cloister; but reckoning by weeks, how large a proportion of their time is spent at home! In short vacations the unselfish mother plans all sorts of pleasures for her daughter, and perhaps says sadly at the end, “I saw little of Ruth. She made or received visits all the fortnight.” The short vacations should, I think, belong to your parents: the summer gives time for other friends. Some day you will understand what it has cost your father and mother to send you out of their sight just as you have become most companionable to them.
In the case of some of you there are sacrifices made at home that you may go to college; and you will bravely share with your parents the “doing without” that is making your liberal education possible. Your social position in these next four years does not depend on money: it does depend on intellect and character; on taste, not expense, in dress and belongings; and on the traditions that you bring with you. “To him that hath shall be given.” The girl who takes something to college gets more, as, when she travels, she gains in proportion to what she carries with her. For example, if you take to college the family tradition of reading, your college lot is a happier one.
The poor girl in college has certain advantages: she is respected for the effort she has made to get there; she at once excites the interest of her teachers; she finds herself in an atmosphere of sympathy and encouragement. She is generously praised, and is made happy by the appreciation of her gifts. Let her guard against vanity and priggishness. The poor and brilliant girl has her own temptations.
If she suffer in some things because of her poverty, it does not matter much. Privations, if they do not injure health, are bracing and tonic. A girl will learn at college, if anywhere, how to be rich though poor. She could be placed in no situation where she could more successfully ignore poverty. Simplicity in dress is “good form” in college. The fatal word “vulgar” is fixed by the initiated upon display, or extremes of fashion. Taste and neatness are luxuries within the reach of girls of small means.
The rich girl has her difficulties. She is often handicapped by poor preparation, which is not so much the fault of her fitting school as of her social life too soon begun. She has had many distractions, with less serious labor of preparation. College routine will be at first irksome to her; but if she has chosen to go to college, she has stuff in her, and she can make of herself the finest type of student. Her money will be “means,” and she will learn noble ways of spending it. Many is the rich girl who is secretly helping a poor girl to get her education.