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.
Oftentimes when a girl fails to adjust herself to the home life, her family and friends feel that she is rather selfish in her desire to carry out her own aims rather than to give them up for new demands. Frequently the family is as much to blame for not realizing that the girl needs to be helped back into the old life as the girl is for not being able to help herself. In the home the spirit of team-play is much needed. Quite as much as the girl, the family has a lesson to learn in the art of adjustment and in remembering that this grown-up child isn't just the same individual she was when she went away several years ago. They need to realize that the girl may be able to give more to the home life than she ever did before, but that it will be given in a somewhat different way.
While she is learning the difficult art of finding her place again, a great deal depends upon the individual girl, not only in the home but in the community at large. Sometimes she needs to be reminded that although she may have had more advantages than those left at home, that doesn't necessarily make her a superior person. A girl who is inclined either to pity or to admire herself too greatly should give herself a vigorous shaking. In the long run she will find it easier to do that on her own account than to have others do it for her. The friends at home, or in the church, or in the town, with education of a different kind coming to them, may have quite as much and more to give her than she to give them. One indicator of a really cultivated woman is her power to adapt herself to the circumstances in which she is placed. A gentlewoman never calls attention to the difference between herself and somebody else. The woman of broad culture is the one who makes everybody feel at home with her. If a girl's education has been worth anything at all, it should give her not a superior, set-aside feeling, but a desire to be more friendly and useful wherever she may be, and, not placing too much stress on externals, to look for essentials, to get the full value from every person and from every experience with which she comes in contact.
Girls go to so many different kinds of homes that it is unlikely that they will meet the same sorts of difficulties. There is the girl who goes into the society home, where it is impossible for her to carry out her ideals without conflict with its social standards. On the other hand, there is the girl who goes into the very simple home where all the stress is upon the domestic side of life. And there is the girl who has to provide part of the family income. Very likely she has the hardest problem of all. She enters upon some new work, and nine times out of ten the way is not made easy for her; she is a novice with all the hardships that come to the novice. Perhaps in the beginning she has met a very real perplexity in hardly knowing what line of work to take up. She has no particular interest, no especial talent, no brilliant record, no powerful friends, no money with which to establish herself. With her it must be as it is with thinking: she must seize hold of the thing nearest her. What seems to her a temporary and unsatisfactory expedient will in many cases open out a path leading to something much broader. At least she may remember this as consolation: that even that experience of uncertainty, of indecision, is a part of education, and out of it, rightly and bravely met, will come some richness for her future life.
The beginning of a work, teaching or anything else, may have to be rather irksome, indeed, may be exceedingly difficult,—an experience that will perhaps test staying power to the utmost. When it is too late to give due appreciation we realize that the work in school which was planned for us and arranged with our physical and mental well-being in view was, after all, not so hard as we thought it at the time. We wish that we had enjoyed our leisure more and complained less.
From the point of view of fatigue, as a secretary, a clerk, a trained nurse, a teacher, a social worker, the burden may be so great that the girl is disheartened. She is all the more disheartened because, knowing that a useful life is a strong, steady pull, the way before her seems interminable. If she carries her whip inside her—this counsel is not for those of us who are lazy—she does well to remember that there is a point beyond which fatigue should not be borne, that is, when it overdraws her capital of health and nervous energy. Raising pigs is preferable to a so-called high profession when pig-raising is happily joined with a reasonable amount of health and security. The pigs and health together can always pay mortgages and buy necessities for those dependent upon us and for ourselves. The high calling without health is like a wet paper-bag: it will hold nothing.
The girl meets with another difficulty in finding out that in almost any line of work a great deal of time is needed for the mastery of what seem the simplest principles. No one wants the girl who hasn't had experience, and nobody seems disposed to take her and give her that experience. However, we all find some one who is hardy enough or kind enough to try us; and as every year now there is more effort put into finding the work girls are most suited to do, there is no excuse for slipping into teaching as a last resort. Not unnaturally we sometimes distrust ourselves, especially in taking up an occupation to which we are not accustomed. And in her new work the girl, uncertain of her ability to master what she has undertaken, is placed in a position in which she has the encouragement of neither the school nor the home. Before, she has put much of the responsibility for her work and life upon parents and instructors. Now she has to be her own judge and pass judgment on herself and her work. She has, too, not only to lift her own weight but the weight of others as well. As she longs for coöperation, good will and encouragement the value of the team-play spirit has never seemed so great before.
We do not need to be told to remember the happy and easy experiences of life. No girl forgets them. What we do need is some one to tell us where the hard places will be, to warn us, to stiffen our courage and to point clearly to the uses of hard work and adversity. And although this may seem like placing another straw on the poor camel's back, it is now time to say that in her life-work, whether it be in her home or outside, a girl should be very clear in her mind what her aims and purposes are. If she is working solely for the praise and commendation of others, she will often be grievously disappointed. Not in recognition does real reward lie, but in the work itself. If she wins great popularity she is likely to find that there is nothing that shifts so quickly and is such a quicksand. If material wealth is her sole object she will harden into the thing she seeks and add but another joyless barbarian to a modern world congratulating itself that barbarism is a thing of the past, and yet presenting the spectacle of a mammon worship such as has never been seen before. If gold is her end, and not the means to a nobler end, then she will find herself constantly sacrificing higher issues to that, and lowering her one-time ideals. Truly the woman who marries solely for the comforts of a home, the woman who teaches, or nurses for "pay" alone, has her reward, and that is in self-destruction. She is a carrier of barbarism, not of culture; of disease, not of health; of tribulation, not of joy. The only real reward there can be lies in the idealism, the joy, the strength of the work done and in a mind and heart conscious of having done their best.