Getting a Girl's Education

Although my parents did not have the opportunity for advanced education, they encouraged their children to do so. They suggested that I prepare for teaching “just in case something would happen to your husband," making the assumption that I would be married and that my husband would provide for me!

Fortunately for the young women of today, there are aptitude tests and guidance counselors and career fairs. Students need not go blindly out into the work world with no idea of what they are suited for or even want to do. While some professions are still difficult for women to enter, there are new opportunities opening continually for those who are prepared intellectually and emotionally. About the only truly "girl job" left is bearing children!

As for me, I did not really know it was possible for women to be horticulturalists, or writers, or librarians, or just about anything else they might want to become. A great many women felt they had to choose between career and marriage, between goals and children; very few had it all. I made choices on the basis of very little information, and it took a long time for me to recognize that there is more to learning than a career education. I was well into middle age before I knew that I needed to keep discovering new things, that I needed to learn how to relax and to play, that I needed to add things of beauty to my life.

Although money was scarce and time for personal pursuits almost non-existent during the most stressed times of my life, I have since concluded that my problem was not really that of having no money and/or too little time. I could usually find free or almost-free entertainment and two-for-one meals. The real problem was giving myself permission to enjoy life a little! A Persian lyric poet of the 13th century wrote, and his words have become some of my favorite:

If, of thy mortal goods, thou art bereft,
And from thy slender store
    two loaves alone to thee are left,
Sell one and from the dole,
Buy Hyacinths to feed thy soul.”

— Muslih-uddin Saadi Shirazi

Your "hyacinths" may not be just like mine or anyone else's. Books and magazines are full of ideas about little expenditures of time and money that don’t wreck the budget but benefit women a great deal. Learn what works for you. Getting a "girls' education" is not complete if we do not learn what benefits our bodies, challenges our minds, and feeds our souls.

Marjorie