Page:The High School Boy and His Problems (1920).pdf/178

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the best of men. Unless one likes his work, unless he can show interest and enthusiasm in it, his lot is a sad one. One should choose for his life work something in which he will find pleasure, he should go to it every morning with delight and should leave it with something like regret. Otherwise there will be for him constant grumbling, unrest and discontent.

It is easy to find illustrations of the fact that interest and enthusiasm will work wonders. Not many years ago a young fellow from a country town in the middle west applied for admission to one of our middle west educational institutions. He had had no high school training, and the admission requirements of the institution were severe. He was past twenty-one years of age, however, so that he was admitted on trial as a special student and allowed to attempt to carry the regular work of the freshman year of the course in which he was interested. It was his greatest pleasure to have a chance to study the subjects which he liked, and he carried that same interest and enthusiasm to all other subjects which he attempted or which he was required to take. During his leisure hours he devoted himself to the high school work which he had missed as a boy, passed it off by examination, and at the end of four years and a half he graduated as an honor student.

No one ever thought that he had a brilliant mind; he had interest and he was willing to work. If such a man as he without adequate preparation, and with