stop to realize that a great deal of the work for an institution is
along the line of self-sacrifice, in the gifts given, in the work of its
administrators and teachers. This unselfishness means a financial loss,
for business ability might be invested in more lucrative ways; it means
a social sacrifice, for there is a certain kind of impersonality which
is demanded in work that deals with a continually changing community; it
means risk in the great strain put upon physical and nervous strength;
it means forgetting one's self; for the true teacher is willing to be
forgotten when she has served others. What a school may accomplish for
its students is its only compensation for all this self-sacrifice.




XII

THE WORK TO BE


One of the qualities a girl who has completed her school or college life
needs to show for a few months more than anything else is the quality of
adjustment, for she will find that she must continually adjust herself
to new conditions whether they be of the home or elsewhere. All the time
through school she has been in some sense a centre of interest. Her
class has been an important factor in the academic life. When she has
gone home it has been as a school or college girl, and she has been of
interest because she brought that life into the home. But now the
attitude of others towards her is different. She ceases to be the centre
of attention, and for her a day of serious readjustment is at hand.
Perhaps in her own estimate she has seemed even more important than she