GIRL’S GREATEST JOY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 245, 17 October 1932, Page 11

GIRL’S GREATEST JOY

LOVE FOR EXAMINATIONS GREAT DISTINCTION AT 21 LL.B. DEGREE WITH HONOURS. The story is told by the Evening News of a London girl who simply revels in examinations and loves the law. Her name is Mabel Clark. She lives at Ilford and works at Somerset House. Life for her the last six years or so may be said to have been just one examination after another. Now that she is just 21 Miss Clark has been given an honour which has fallen to no woman before. After passing the LL.B. with, honours ehe has been recommended by the London University authorities for a law «cholarship in the University. Whether she will be the first woman ever to ga u this scholarship will be decided by thu Senate of the University. Miss Clark discovered that she had the examination temperament at school. While others quaked and failed sho won in a canter. And, according to her friends, she showed a taste foi the law’ when quite a child. In school examinations Miss Clark was always expected to be top. And when she decided to seek the fulfilment of her legal aspirations through the civil service she passed the entrance examination with equal facility. Just as a “try out” she took, in October, 1926, tho examination for female telegraphists. t?he secured first place. Two months later she tried tho Female Sorting Assistants’ examination and again was placed at tho head of | the list. But the Post Office did not look like providing scope enough for I law study and Miss Clark, within three months, was one of 850 candidates in the writing assistants’ examinations. She again won the first position. Miss Clark started her civil service career with the Board of Trade. Within two months she was in the examination room again. This time she was J Ith in tho clerical class examination —a success which took her from the Board of Trade to the Public Trustee Office. Here she stayed for more than a year, reading law books in her spare 1 ime. in October, 1928, this remarkable girl took the executive class examination. She was second, beaten “a head” by a man. She was easily first among the girl entrants. This meant another move—to the estate duty office in Somerset House. At the nge of 18 she was an examiner, spending her days delving into the intricacies of duty liabilities and her evenings among her law books at her Ilford home. This year Miss Clark achieved one of her cherished ambitions—the LL.B. And if she gets that t*cholarship as well, it will be a golden opportunity for her, but she dues not intend to give up the civil service. “She really loves her job,” a friend said of Miss Clark, “though some people might think it a bit dry. There can lie few girls with such an interest in law. As for examinations, she enjoys them. She believes that candidates should compete as individuals rather than as men and women striving ag | nst each other.” She is an only child.