Page:The High School Boy and His Problems (1920).pdf/48

 to make a success in life, don't choose the job that offers you the easiest time or the most money. Choose rather the one that requires the hardest work and furnishes the greatest opportunity for your development." Now a boy trains his mind as he learns a profession or trains his muscles, by putting it to the test and seeing what it can regularly do when it is pushed. It is for this reason that I should advise a boy, no matter what his regular curriculum in the high school may be, always to select some course that will give his mind a good work out.

I heard an architect say once that to be worth much in his profession an architect had to be able to do his work rapidly and to do it well. There are a great many people, he alleged, who can turn out a lot of work in a short time, but it proves inaccurate or worthless; there are a great many others whose work is beautifully and carefully done, but it takes them all summer to get anything accomplished. Neither sort of person will get far in his profession. Out of his high school course every boy should learn concentration—that is the ability to center the mind on a definite piece of work and to bring it to completion within a definite and reasonable time. Some boys learn this trick more easily than others, but it is quite possible for every boy so to acquire control of his mind that it will accomplish what he wants it to do within the time at his disposal. Possibly the best way to bring this about is through setting for himself mental "stunts" and trying to see in how short a time these may be satis-