There is nothing, good, bad, or indifferent, but has some points of interest if the mind turns its entire attention to it. But our tendency is to grow tired of calling back our wandering thoughts again and again to the thing that is hard, dry, or stupid. And we need more incentive than just the doing of the duty because it is to be done. We need a compelling interest in the goal to encourage our wills to concentration on the less interesting. Let us first think out the _why_ of knowing anatomy if we are to be nurses. And if the profession of nursing is the goal, let anatomy become just the next stretch of the road that leads to it. Concentration can be acquired. It may require three hours at first to learn your lesson; but later on you will do it in two, then in one, and perhaps in less. And when you can sit down with your notes and learn them with voices about you--perhaps; with some one else in the room; with a party an hour ahead; when you can disregard all but the work at hand, then you can concentrate, and the big battle of your life as a student is won. Study is no longer drudgery. Lessons occupy much less of your time and leave you more free hours. Because you give them your whole mind you learn them in a fraction of the hours hitherto wasted upon them, when you studied with divided attention. When you are doing clear thinking on the thing at hand, satisfactory results are assured. SELF-TRAINING IN MEMORY Hand in hand with clear thinking goes reliable memory. But so many of us have it not, and feel its need so strongly that we shall consider for a moment some means of training it. William James holds that brain-paths cannot be deepened; that memory is not strengthened in that way. There is a natural retentiveness with which some of us are born--the men of colossal intellect--and they remember and are able to use infinitely more things acquired in the past, because they have a brain substance of greater tenacity in holding impressions than others possess. James compares some brains to wax in which the mark left by the seal is permanent; and others he compares to jelly which vibrates at every touch, but retains no dent made in it. From our study of the subconscious we know that the dent did leave an impression on the brain; but it was in the subconscious. So we beg to change the figure and liken, in all mankind, that part of the brain that handles the subconscious to wax, while granting that in some rare cases parts handling the conscious material also hold impressions, as does the wax.