That night I wrote in my diary, doubtless sentimentally, of this new idea. I think I rather gloried in Mother’s objections, and in the ridicule of my sister when she heard of it. (She probably felt much as some other girls and boys did: some boys who remembered my hyper-sensitiveness and timidity as a child thought I would never have “sand” enough to study medicine.) For a little I chose to consider myself a martyr. Years later, in looking over the diaries of that period, much of what I had written seemed so at variance with what I then felt, that it seemed like the experience of another person--so false, so sentimental, such a pose! In shame and disgust I destroyed the records. From the time, though, that the idea came to me, it was persistently held. In school I worked with added zeal, paying especial attention to studies I thought would be of use to me, and feeling impatient at those which were distasteful, and which I thought little likely to be helpful. But how poorly qualified was I then to judge of this! I know now that just because of my failure to buckle down to what was hard for me (particularly mathematics and physics), I missed the mental training I most needed in those years. The education of the attention, the moving along calmly from proof to proof, the deductions, the synthesis, the exactness, the close, true ways of thinking, the patience, the calmness; in short, the mental discipline which mathematics would have given me, I failed to acquire; and I can now see how handicapped I have been because of this failure. With senses so acute, and the emotional nature so intense, the proper balance would have been found in a more rigid intellectual training. The deficiencies have had to be made up, when made up at all, at too great a cost; and the efficiency in my chosen field of work has fallen far short of what it might have been had I been more tractable then, more heedful of the advice of my elders. Confiding my hopes to a few intimates, from them I got the sympathy I craved. Gradually my ambition became known in the school. It was perhaps two years later before a word was said to me on the subject by my father. I thought it strange that he who showed such an interest in my studies should be so indifferent in this which meant so much to me. But I learned in time that it was not indifference. It seems he told Mother not to be anxious over it and not attempt to dissuade me. “If it is a mere whim,” he had said, “it will soon pass, and no harm will be done; but if she is in earnest, she will do it, and opposition will only make her more intent on it.” When he saw it was not a whim, he acted promptly enough; and when the time came for me to go to college, he smoothed the way as only the most unselfish of fathers could. And so did Mother and Sister; their ready help was given, their own economies and self-sacrifices were cheerfully contributed that I might accomplish my purpose.