Page:The High School Boy and His Problems (1920).pdf/179

 only average brains, could through desire and interest mainly, accomplish such gratifying results, what could a thoroughly well-prepared man not do? And what is true of one sort of work is true of another. It is the man who is working because he enjoys it who throws his whole soul into what he is doing and who can not be excelled or defeated. It is the men who have no enthusiasms, and who can't get down to work, who are always in doubt as to whether or not they have chosen correctly, and who seldom succeed. The young fellow who knows what he wants to do and is willing and eager to do whatever is necessary to accomplish his purposes is a long way toward success. The man who doesn't know his own mind, who is waiting for someone to pick out for him a good job, or to set him up in a successful business, has little chance of getting anywhere.

Men say sometimes that the thing they would like most to do requires so much preparation before they are ready to go on with it, that they can not afford the time or the money required to fit them to begin. They would like to be lawyers or physicians or preachers or architects or whatever it may be, but to be a well-prepared physician requires seven or eight years of study and preparation not to speak of the sum of money to be expended, and they feel that they will be half through life before they are ready to take up its duties. Men excuse themselves for not finishing a college course which they have begun, on the ground that they have found a good open-