Page:The High School Boy and His Problems (1920).pdf/173

 wanted to go into business, but father insisted on my studying engineering because he thought it offered the best opportunities to a young fellow of anything going, and because Uncle John is in a position to give me a job and a good start when I have graduated."

Chilton will never make an engineer no matter how hard his father sets his jaw and no matter how good a job his Uncle John has waiting for him, because he hasn't a mathematical brain, he doesn't like engineering, and he has not learned to do anything well which he doesn't like.

This leads me to say that there is probably no more foolish practice than to choose a business or a profession purely because in itself it seems to offer peculiar opportunities or attractions. All through the summer following their graduation from high school, boys come to see me or write to me concerning their entrance to college.

"What do you think is a good course for a fellow to take up?" they ask me, with the idea in mind that there must be some work par excellence in itself, regardless of the individual or of his attitude toward his work. They do not see that it is the man and not the profession that brings about success. They argue that because electricity is the coming motive power, electrical engineering is really the only course to pursue if they are going to college, or possibly that because chemistry has played such a wonderful part in the war and will play an even more wonderful part in the reconstruction which follows the war, chemistry is an unusually good field for a boy to enter. They are, no