Let us take another case as an example of what I mean. You really have
talent for wood carving and finally decide that you will take up this
vocation――an admirable one. You thoroughly understand that in order to
become a good wood-carver you must first learn to use the tools, to
know how to take care of them. After this you must learn all about the
different kinds of woods, how they are prepared and what effects the
weather and climate have upon them. When you have been through all this
preliminary work, there must come a study of designs and the history of
your vocation or art. This is YOUR college education in preparation for
good work and the success good work brings. You have been taught the
use of every detail which goes to make up a good foundation for your
career. You know HOW to use the tools and everything else is now up to
you to make good. If your heart is in the work you will surely win out.
You will be apt to hear a lot about the cultural advantages of a
college education; that it is never amiss in any calling. But right
here comes a fact generally overlooked――you can receive a cultural
education along any line you take up, and the better you apply yourself
to your vocation, the better will your culture be.
In wood carving, for instance, there is much along the lines of art,
painting and sculpture to be learned. Such progressive work may lead
you to become a famous sculptor or decorator of the highest order. If
you have wasted your time along the cultural lines needed for a writer
or doctor, learned how to use their tools, but do not possess their
mental equipment, failure is certain. The failures come from mental
dissatisfaction.
Get out of your minds the idea that there are only three or four
professions which bring position and respect. This is a great mistake
and is the cause for many poor doctors, the hordes of unscrupulous
lawyers and weak-kneed ministers.
Many of these failures would have been successful as carpenters,
machinists, draughtsmen or contractors. But they all wanted to go or
were pushed into holes they could not fit.
Remember the old saying, “A round peg will not fit into a square hole.”
A trained machinist, one who takes delight in his trade, can rise far
higher in worldly goods and the respect of his fellow-men than ever can
a half-contented doctor. It is the same with an electrician, bridge
worker, house painter, any and all trades where the man has learned
to use his brain-tools and keeps sharpening them on the grindstone of
pleasure.
Don’t go into law or medicine unless you go into these professions
for the love of the work. You may not know it, but the income of
the average doctor or lawyer is not that of even the paper-hanger or
bricklayer. If you are determined to be a doctor for the love of the
profession and the great good you can do――and most of you will have
to do it free for the needy and poor――then you will be happy and also
probably poor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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