FOR THE GIRLS

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 285, 2 December 1933, Page 2 (Supplement)

FOR THE GIRLS

LEAVING SCHOOL^

THOUGHTS ON BREAKING-UP DAY. My Dear Girls, — I confess lam feeling just a teeny bit excited. December! Doesn't the very sound of it stir your heart and call- up visions of holidays by • the sea or on the farm, or in some beloved spot within reach of "scent and song and the wind in the trees?" A delightful month, and how it seems to fly, with Christinas just round the cornei;, and breaking-up day a few short weeks away. This year to many of you prize-giving will h6ld a new significance. There will be, as of yore, the • joyful anticipation of holidays ahead of summer days at the seashore or away in the heart of the country-— but added to this will be the graver knowledge that schooldays are over, that they belong now to a day that is past, and that a future rich in possibilities lies stretching before you. I have a recollection of one prize-giving—indeed many years will pass before the memory of it fades, before I can in ray mind no longer hear the school song as it was sung that day. And I remember, too, the heaviness of my heart and my wonderment that this should be the longawaited day of leaving school. Several of you have written that this month will mark the close of school days, and that until the opportunity comes of entering on the work or career you have in view you are to stay at home with mother. Now at first, of course, this novel holiday will be most exciting. Lessons are over and the regular routine of school days a thing of the past. All at once you come into an inheritance of freedom, which is at first purely delightful,' but which, as the weeks go .by, begins a little to bore. Idleness never delights for long, and one day you will surprise yourself by wishing suddenly you were back once more at school, with it* routine of healthful work which made play seem well earned and very pleasant. So, girls, on prize-giving day, when memories come crowding from that chapter of your life which now is past, when your thoughts go flying ahead to the future stretching before you, make a little resolution in your inmost heart that the years ahead will never be regretted, that you will make of it a year of work and play and happiness. The years between school life and the serious . duties of "grown-up hood" can be so very happy jv jiJ and pleasant. It should rest with each and every i one of you to use them as an arming time for life's battle. V